Sent abroad by her nephew to recuperate from an illness, Jane Marple finds herself at a sun-drenched resort on the West Indian island of St Honoré. The palm trees and warm sea make pleasant company, but the elderly amateur sleuth quietly misses the human texture of her village, where she knows everyone and reads people effortlessly. To pass the hours she half-listens to the garrulous Major Palgrave, an old soldier who spins one tall tale after another. When he begins a story about a man who got away with murder and offers to show her a snapshot of the killer, he suddenly stops short and changes the subject. The following morning the Major is found dead, and the convenient explanation of high blood pressure does not quite satisfy Miss Marple. With little to go on but a vanished photograph and her own instinct for ordinary human wickedness, she begins to observe the other guests: holidaying couples, the young pair who run the hotel, a watchful staff. Confined by age and unfamiliar surroundings, she finds an unlikely ally in Mr Rafiel, a sharp-tongued, gravely ill millionaire whose mind remains as fierce as his temper. Working through quiet conversation and patient deduction, Marple races to identify a murderer who has already killed and may be preparing to kill again. The result is a tightly plotted puzzle set far from her familiar lanes, in which a paradise of leisure conceals very old and very human motives.
