This unusual PI thriller reads like a cross between Agatha Christie and the Hunger Games. Kate Weller is a private detective in Savannah, Georgia, who is wondering whether her Italian chef boyfriend should give up the family restaurant and become a PI. They get invited to a work team building break on a luxury island retreat off the Georgia coastline. This is about to become the ISLAND OF LAST RESORTS.

I hadn’t read the earlier books in this Kate Weller series. Mainly we take away the feeling that Kate is welcome in the family of Eric Manfredi, even if she can’t cook. Next, we meet the six people – three couples – from the Price Agency, who head off gaily to the island over twenty miles from shore on a private yacht. Kate and Eric are not among the group. Due to a family member’s accident, Eric has been delayed. Missing the boat means the couple stay in the shore village, increasingly baffled as to why nobody fetches them, and no other boat can be hired to travel to the private island.

Meanwhile, on the island, matters are going from bad to worse. The five-star treatment soon becomes a requirement to resolve a cold case, with no way to contact the mainland, and heavily armed guards… and possibly abducted people too.

The challenges and stakes keep rising and the overgrown island holds many dangers. The reader had better be ready to suspend some disbelief, not least at the past behaviour of the legal system. But if someone did want to solve a case, setting a team of private detectives loose on it might not be a bad idea. Now, Sue Grafton it’s not. Mary Ellis is writing a contrived and knotty tale of human frailty, personal tragedy and active revenge. The PIs are entirely human; they bemoan the lack of cell service and wi-fi at once, and keep complaining that they miss being able to research on the internet. Some of the team are spouses, not qualified detectives, but they provide a good variety of talents. The language is restrained, I was pleased to note.

Mary Ellis may be better known to you as the author of wonderful Amish romances, like Love Comes To Paradise and A Plain Man, both of which I enjoyed. I’m delighted to see her spread her wings further. ISLAND OF LAST RESORTS, once it takes off, proceeds at a breakneck pace and shows the dangerous side of life; it couldn’t be more different.

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