Crime writers adore islands. We love the sense of being trapped within a community apart, where normal codes of behavior, if not ignored, can be allowed to slip. We love the physical difficulties (amidst small populations, along narrow, isolated roads, where can one hide?) and the psychological trauma that goes hand in hand with that sense of there being no escape. On an island, anything can happen. In a crime novel, it usually does.
Sharon Bolton
Some of the finest mysteries and thrillers have been set on islands - real and fictitious - over the years. Here are ten of the best.
And then there were none (1939) Agatha Christie
In what is widely regarded as Christie's masterpiece, ten people, each with a dark secret, are left stranded on 'Soldier Island', just off the coast of Devon. One by one, they die, in the manners described in the creepy nursery rhyme, Ten Little Soldiers. An ambitious concept, and one that could have touched upon the ludicrous, but in Christie's skillful hands the twisty, turny plot is solidly constructed and brilliantly cunning.
Lord of the Flies (1954) William Golding
In this English classic, a group of British boys are stranded on an uninhabited Pacific island and try to govern themselves, with tragic results. Whilst not a crime novel per se, Lord of the Flies captures better than most island stories the contrast between the structured morality of the normal world, and the descent into anarchy that can occur when the more primitive side of human nature (aka savagery) is unleashed.
The Magus (1965) John Fowles
Young British student, Nicholas Urfe, finds himself lonely and depressed whilst teaching on the Greek island of Phraxos. A chance encounter with a wealthy recluse, Maurice Conchis, leads to Nicholas taking part in a series of sinister games. As the games turn darker and more intense Nicholas becomes less able to distinguish between the real and the fantasy. He longs to break away; the island (and its mysterious inhabitant) hold him in their thrall. The Magus, usually described as a book for the young, is about learning that the world is a mysterious and limitless place, beyond our control and all the more exciting, and daunting, because of it.
The Woman in Black (1983) - Susan Hill
OK, strictly, this is not an island story, it merely has scenes set on an island. But what scenes! And what an island! When the tide comes in, when the sand spit is covered, there is no escape, for poor Arthur, or for us. We see the black clad woman as clearly as Arthur sees her, we hear the cries of the dying child, the screams of the terrified pony. This story has been scaring us for decades and will probably go down in history as the ultimate tale of horror.
Jurassic Park (1990) - Michael Chrichton
There can be few people, the world over, who don't know the story of the eccentric billionaire and the themed park of cloned dinosaurs he creates on an island off the coast of Costa Rica. As if often the case, though, the book is richer, deeper and more mysterious than the film franchises it spawned. This book demonstrates, better than any other, that on a remote island, anything can happen.
Shutter Island (2003) - Dennis Lehane
A stark, forbidding island cut off from the US mainland by a hurricane, a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane with a reputation for controversial research and experimental techniques, a beautiful, missing murderer and a US marshal with major issues of his own. As the story unfolds, we begin to question everything we are being told. Who is lying to us? Quite possibly, everyone. This is Gothic psychological horror writing at its best.
Raven Black (2006)- Ann Cleeves
Winter has an iron-clad grip on the Shetland Islands, off the north east coast of Scotland, when dawn breaks on New Years Day to reveal the body of a young girl on the frozen sand. Clues and red herrings drift across the landscape like the gloomy ravens of the title. My first novel, Sacrifice, was set on the Shetland Islands. Naively, I thought it would be groundbreaking. It wasn't, this one was, and rightly won the Gold Dagger.
Mr Clarinet (2006) - Nick Stone
Pied Pier, soul stealer, serial killer. Who is Mr Clarinet? On the island of Haiti, still reeling from the sickeningly corrupt rule of Papa Doc Duvalier, children are being stolen away amidst rumours of black magic and voodoo. Private investigator, Max Mingus, is hired to track down the son of a wealthy islander. Nick Stone lived for many years in Haiti, and his in-depth knowledge of the place seeps through the book like the blood of its numerous victims. The Haiti of this novel is dark, lawless, dangerous, and utterly fascinating.
Entry Island (2014) - Peter May
May dips his toe into the Stygian waters of the supernatural, with this time-slip novel set on Entry Island, 850 miles off the coast of Canada. Lead murder investigator, Sime Mackenzie, can't shake the feeling that he knows his prime suspect, a woman he has never met before. Shortly after arriving on the island, Sime starts to dream of a distant Scottish past, when people of the Hebridean Islands were forced out of their homes and made to travel to the far corners of the earth. As the mystery unfolds. he has to choose between professional duty and personal destiny.
The Light Between Oceans - M L Stedman
A boat is washed up on a remote island off the coast of Australia, containing nothing but a lighthouse. In it are a dead man and a living baby. The lighthouse keeper and his wife have to decide what to do. The contrasts between the lighthouse island, where the keeper and his wife are a law unto themselves, and the nearby mainland, where forces of normality and conscience wrestle for their attention, is sharp. The writing is stark and elegant. This is a heartbreakingly beautiful book.
Sharon Bolton's latest book, Little Black Lies, is set on the Falkland Islands.