This is the sixth and final book in M.M. Kaye’s Death In… series. I’ve now read all of them and although this one, Death in the Andamans, is not my favourite it’s another that I’ve enjoyed. If you’re new to these books, don’t worry about reading them in order – they are all completely separate, standalone novels, the only connection between them being that they’re all murder mysteries featuring a young female protagonist and set in countries the author had personally visited.

Copper Randall is working as a typist in a London office when she receives an unexpected inheritance from an uncle and decides to spend some of the money on a visit to the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. Her friend, Valerie Masson, is the stepdaughter of the Chief Commissioner there and has invited Copper to stay with them at Government House on Ross Island, the administrative capital of the Andamans (at this time, the Andamans, like the rest of India, are still under British control). Copper arrives just in time for Christmas and, on Christmas Eve, attends a picnic with the other British people on the island – a community which includes Valerie’s fiancé Charles and his friend Nick, who has become Copper’s own love interest.

As the picnic breaks up and the group begin to return home, some by road and some by boat, they are caught in a sudden, violent storm. One of the party is swept overboard and presumed drowned, but as the others reach the safety of Government House and take shelter there, they start to wonder whether it really was an accidental death. Cut off from the rest of the islands by the weather, Copper and her friends must try to identify the murderer before they have a chance to kill again.

There are plenty of suspects, the most obvious being the dead man’s cousin, who stands to inherit his coconut plantation if no will is found. But of course, there are other people who also had the opportunity, although their motives are less clear. There are lots of clues, lots of red herrings and lots of creeping around in the middle of the night listening to footsteps and creaking floorboards (this sort of scene seems to be a speciality of Kaye’s, appearing several times in almost every book in the series!). I didn’t solve the mystery, although the culprit was one of several people I had suspected throughout the novel. Once the villain was revealed, though, I felt that the conclusion was too drawn-out with various characters taking turns to give explanations and tie up loose ends.

Like most of the other Death In… books, this one provides a snapshot of the British Empire in its final days, although she doesn’t really explore the local politics or the effects of colonialism here the way she does in Death in Kashmir or Death in Kenya. You do have to put up with some of the attitudes of the time – the sense of entitlement, the dismissal of the local people as superstitious and uneducated, as well as some sexism with Copper and Valerie’s two boyfriends, Nick and Charles, determined to keep the women out of danger. Charles also has an irritating habit of speaking like someone from a PG Wodehouse novel (deliberately – we are told that he’s been modelling his conversation on the books he’s found in the library, ‘an institution that would appear to have been last stocked during the frivolous twenties by a fervent admirer of such characters as Bertie Wooster’.).

However, the descriptions of the Andaman Islands are beautiful: the breeze ‘whispering through the mango trees’, the ‘tall, feathery clusters of bamboo’, the beach with its ‘clear, glassy water that shivered to a lace of foam about the dark shelves of rock’. Kaye really excels at creating a strong sense of place – I think only Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart are as good! The way she describes the approach of the storm, with its torrential rain and hurricane-force winds is particularly dramatic.

In her author’s note, Kaye describes how she came to write this novel; it was inspired by a visit to the Andamans in the 1930s, when her friend’s father was posted there as Chief Commissioner (the character of Valerie is clearly based on the friend). However, due to the outbreak of World War II, the book didn’t get published until 1960 – originally under the title of Night on the Island and then again in 1985 as Death in the Andamans. This explains why the novel feels much older than the publication date would suggest.

Not the best book in the series, then, but still an entertaining read.

This is book 3/20 from my 20 Books of Summer list.