Six guests embark on a wilderness tour, but only two emerge
Devils
Island is home to abundant wildlife, making it the ideal place to
reintroduce endangered Tasmanian devils. Working to rescue,
rehabilitate, and release devils has been Kerry' s job and passion for
years, but a new opportunity to work as a naturalist guide for a tour
company offers her a respite from the emotionally grueling task of
trying to save an endangered species.
Her first tour group as
lead guide includes American college friends Brooke and Jane, who are
reconnecting after years of estrangement, and two Australian couples
hoping to escape their big-city lives and enjoy the company of longtime
friends.
When one of the guests disappears on the first night,
the group assumes she has wandered too far in the stormy weather. Yet it
turns out she has a secret connection to one of the other guests— and
when another hiker is found dead in camp, the group finds itself
isolated by the worsening storm and wondering who among them might be
responsible.
Perfect for fans of Lisa Unger and Barbara Kingsolver
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What I thought about Devils Island
I love a good "locked room mystery", especially when it is set among challenging conditions, like snow storms or other natural disasters. I'm also a fan of learning about new locations or conditions or situations that I may not be able to experience in my little two horse town. So when I read the description for this book, I was all-in.
The story is set in Tasmania, Australia. Right there I was hooked because I really don't know much about Tasmania and the initial pages take the reader right into the rescue and release operations. Kerry is the lead tour guide, with Bryan as her second. There are 6 people on the tour with them -- two Americans, Brooke and Jane, and two Australian couples who have been friends for years. So there's lot of potential histories with these folks and plenty of suspects too!
The story is told in multiple points of view, but for the most part, the story is told from Kerry and Brooke's point of view. I wasn't sure if I liked any of these characters, to be honest, but I did want to see how everything panned out. This was an entertaining mystery, with some places where the could have been some revisions to make things a bit tighter. There were a few info dumps and a lot of telling that could have been improved upon to make a stronger story.
Overall, I did enjoy this mystery. I need to have at least one twist that I don't see coming, and Devils Island delivered on that, but the un-likability of the characters and the copious amount of telling and info dumps brought down the rating.
About the Authors
Midge Raymond is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent and a short-story collection, Forgetting English, which received the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in TriQuarterly, American Literary Review, North American Review, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, Poets & Writers, and many other publications.
Midge is also the author of Devils Island,
co-authored with John Yunker. She has taught writing at Boston
University, Boston's Grub Street Writers, Seattle's Richard Hugo House,
and San Diego Writers, Ink.
Midge lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Visit her online at www.MidgeRaymond.com and www.MidgeandJohn.com.
John Yunker is a writer of plays, short stories and novels focused on human/animal relationships.
He
is co-founder of Ashland Creek Press, a vegan-owned publisher devoted
to environmental and animal rights literature. He is author of the novel
The Tourist Trail and the sequel Where Oceans Hide Their Dead.
His
full-length play Meat the Parents was a finalist at the Centre Stage
New Play Festival (South Carolina) and semi-finalist in the AACT new
play contest. Species of Least Concern was a finalist in the Mountain
Playhouse Comedy Festival. His short play, Little Red House, was
published in the literary journal Mason's Road, and produced by the
Studio Players Theatre in Lexington, Kentucky. The short play Of Mice
and Marines was workshopped and given a staged reading at the ATHE
(Association for Theatre in Higher Education) conference in Las Vegas.
His short stories have been published by literary journals such as Phoebe, Qu, Flyway, and Antennae.
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