The Skull Beneath the Skin

 In this blog post, I reviewed PD James’s the Skull Beneath the Skin, the second installment in the Cordelia Gray mystery series. (I finished reading this book in mid-September last year.) This mystery has all the fixings of a locked-room mystery set in an island.  For Cordelia Grey, this was her first installment as a female private eye, when Clarissa Lile’s husband asks her to protect her from vile death threats and other mishappenings on the sunlit island of Courcy, Scotland. But it was anything but a simple assignment for Cordelia. She met the people who were closest to her, and discovered shocking secrets about her, up until when she discovered Clarissa was dead in her room. That’s when the local police were brought in, when more shocking twists and turns to the end would leave you guessing whodunit literally.

This compelling mystery will leave you in suspense from the first page to the last. I instantly cared about Cordelia, and how she would handle this most complex case, when danger all but surrounded her. I didn’t like Clarissa at all, but I  felt bad for her stepson Simon. I liked the far-off island of Courcy  set in the United Kingdom, which suited it as the best for the location and the settings. The theme of the story is that secrets always have a way of coming out of the dark.

I rated this intriguing mystery four stars, because it was a bit dark in nature.  If you love locked-room dark mysteries with non-stopping suspense, red herrings, surprising twists and turns, and a good book to hook you, The Skull Beneath the Skin should be read this year.  This book is recommended for fans of Knives Out, Britbox Mysteries, and Agatha Christie.