Mitchell, Gladys - The Murder of Busy Lizzie (1973)

Review by Nick Fuller

3/5

"Witches and warlocks, bird-watchers and thugs! What sort of place is this island?"

Infinitely more successful than the earlier Skeleton Island (1967), which also dealt with the same ingredients — islands, smugglers, drowning / falls off cliffs, lighthouses, and ornithologists. This is good, straight-forward, fast-paced and exciting Mitchell, the plot reasonably complex and well-articulated, although the murderer's identity is arbitrary, with several more attempted murders thrown in for good luck. The island, "called Great Skua because of a theory, not particularly borne out by fact, that from the mainland it resembled in shape and general colouring that predatory sea-bird ... was nothing more than a vast piece of granite rock ... but ... looked about as welcoming as a prison", has good landscape, with caves, coves, cliffs, and tides, all profitable for great explorations; and the ingredients of the story, including gun-running (as the island "'must have been a smugglers' paradise at one time, and I believe it still is'"), white witchcraft, desecrated graves, and ornithologists, are well-combined. The only problem is that Dame Beatrice only begins to function in Chapter 9 (although she and Laura, staying in the house where, unbeknownst to them, the murder was committed, appear earlier). Most of the story is seen through the eyes of the victim's nephew and niece. Otherwise, an agreeable and diverting story.