Hell Bay (Barker & Llewelyn, #8) by Will Thomas Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #8
Pages: 304
Published by Minotaur Books on October 25, 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads
When two people are murdered during a secret government conference on a secluded island estate, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker must find the killer among the guests before it’s too late.
At the request of Her Majesty’s government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment—he’s to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. The conference is to take place on the private estate of Lord Hargrave on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. The goal of the conference is the negotiation of a new treaty with France. The cover story for the gathering is a house party—an attempt to introduce Lord Hargrave’s two unmarried sons to potential mates.
But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador’s head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island—a boat—has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed. Trapped in a manor house with no way of escape, Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, must uncover which among them is the killer before the next victim falls.
My Review:
In this eighth entry in the Barker & Llewelyn series, after the private enquiry agents’ immersion in the deepest of London’s hells in pursuit of Jack the Ripper in Anatomy of Evil, Cyrus Barker finds himself far outside his usual stomping and stalking grounds, caught literally between Scylla and Charybdis, at the furthermost west point of the Scilly Isles maneuvered into a case he’d really rather not have taken.
But Scylla in the person of the woman who holds his heart, Mrs. Philippa Ashleigh, has conspired with her dear friend Lady Hargrave to invite Barker – with Llewelyn as his aide-de-camp, assistant, general factotum and whatever other jobs Barker needs him to turn his hand to – in tow. Mrs. Ashleigh has been attempting, for months if not longer, to drag Barker to a country house party in spite of how little he desires to attend such a thing.
Mrs. Ashleigh’s manipulations, however, have dovetailed all too neatly with those of the government, the monstrous Charybdis of this analogy. Lord Hargrave has planned a secret meeting with his old friend – and his daughter’s godfather – the French ambassador, at a house party on his estate in the Scilly Isles. Hargrave commissions Barker and Llewelyn to provide security for the clandestine meeting. While Barker protests, and rightfully so, that this is not the sort of work at which his agency excels, because two men simply are not enough to get the job done, the combined machinations of his government and his lady have forced his hand.
At first, Barker dreads the prospect of endless boredom and terrible attempts to make – or avoid – small talk with the other guests. His hopes (or fears) of that boredom are dashed before the end of the first evening, when his host is killed by a sniper, the French ambassador’s head of security is stabbed to death and the only means of leaving the remote island are destroyed.
The country house party swiftly changes from a pleasure trip to a siege, as the guests and staff are picked off one by one in a multitude of methods that seem deadly and/or devastating by capricious turns.
The killer clearly has an agenda, and its up to Barker and Llewelyn – in spite of the distrust they face from ALL of the guests – to figure out who has meticulously planned to eliminate every single person on Godolphin Island until there are none left.
Escape Rating A-: First, it may seem like I picked this one up much too soon after Anatomy of Evil – and it’s true that this one does suffer a bit in comparison. But in truth I read the earlier book on the plane home from San Diego last month, and took my trip to Hell Bay on the plane home from London last week.
At least it wasn’t a boat on MY return trip.
I did enjoy Hell Bay for its character development, but it did suffer a bit in comparison to Anatomy of Evil, which, with its deep dive into London’s Whitechapel district and its nail-biting hunt for Jack the Ripper – as well as its plausible solution to that historical conundrum – was an absolutely compelling read.
Hell Bay, which provided some fantastic insights into the relationship between Cyrus Barker and Mrs. Philippa Ashleigh – and do I ever wonder where that’s going after this book – was quite a departure for the detective duo.
And not in the best way, as this story takes Barker & Llewelyn out of their London setting and puts them in a place that is not suited to them or their methods. These particular fish, in spite of being in the middle of the ocean, are very much out of water.
The place they were out of that water, storywise, was all too similar to Erik Larson’s No One Goes Alone, and of course Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – even if the means and motives for both of those stories turned out to be different. Also, I was a bit disappointed with No One Goes Alone so the resemblance between the stories did not serve as a pleasant harbinger for my read of this one.
One of the things that I did like about this one – and it’s something that has been true with other stories in this series where Barker is on the case – is the way that the crimes and their motives turned out not to be the seemingly obvious ones, but those more obvious possibilities turned into rather tasty red herrings for the detectives.
And, as stated earlier, while we still don’t know as much as Thomas Llewelyn would like about Cyrus Barker’s background, he did observe a great deal about the relationship between his ‘Guv’ and Mrs. Ashleigh and it’s clear that she is going to be having, perhaps not exactly second thoughts but certainly some serious rethinking about that relationship and where she thinks its going vs. where Barker will ever be willing to go – and not just because I seriously doubt the man will EVER be willing to attend another country house party.
We’ll certainly see in the books to come, as my catch up read of the Barker & Llewelyn series continues with the short story An Awkward Way to Die and the following full-length novel, Old Scores, the next times I need a book that is guaranteed to pull me in and sweep me away – as this series always does – even if, on this particular occasion, it also swept me a bit out to sea.
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