Murder on Mustique by Anne Glenconner

 I read Anne Glenconner’s best-selling autobiography ‘Lady in Waiting’ on holiday on Nevis a year ago. Although I do not really gravitate towards reading murder mysteries, I enjoyed ‘Murder on Mustique’ as it took me back to the Caribbean during this time of Lockdown when we are not allowed to travel anywhere. We first visited the Caribbean in 1981 and holidayed in Barbados. Since then we have visited Cuba, Saint Lucia, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Saint Barts, Antigua, Saint Kitts and the Bahamas. Nevis was our favourite with its historical associations connected to Lord Nelson - his wife Fanny was born there and we stayed on her family’s former plantation. Recently we enjoyed a holiday in Bermuda - in the Atlantic, rather than the Caribbean, but equally beautiful with pristine turquoise waters lapping on to pink sand. We hope to return to Barbados one day, and I look forward to staying at The Cotton House on Mustique too, if that were possible. But for now I can only visit in my imagination, and this novel effortlessly takes me to the island where ‘it’s still so thick with trees and undergrowth it looks like an emerald, resting on a skein of blue velvet.’

Set in 2002, the author’s familiarity with the island (owned by her husband years ago) let’s her invite the reader into exclusive private villas dotted around the island, Basil’s beach bar and the Bamboo church. The story is partly autobiographical - Anne Glenconner becomes Lady Vee Blake, her husband Colin Tennant, Jasper. But when a young woman is murdered fiction takes over...

I look forward to reading more of the adventures of Lady Vee and Detective Solomon Nile on the trail of ‘who done it?’But I look forward even more to visiting the island, less menacing, I hope,  in reality than in fiction.

The sun is sinking behind the horizon and I almost think I catch a flash of emerald green on the sea’s surface - but no. Mustique looks absolutely beautiful, a home from home, and my heart is full of gratitude as I hurry down the steps to greet my friends.

That’s a relief.