One almost expects Hercule Poirot to come mincing into the library, or Chief Inspector Barnaby, policing the deadly villages of Midsomer, to arrest the villain in this book. Those famous fictional characters would fit right in to this murder mystery set near the end of World War I in a country house party on an island off the Devon coast of the UK.

Kate Cartwright works for the Secret Intelligence Service. Her brother, Arthur, was reported dead during the war, and she and her titled parents are among guests at Blackwater Abbey, whose owner, military industrialist Lord Highmount, has arranged for a spiritualist gathering to contact Arthur and his two sons, also killed in the war.

Other participants are two spiritualists, a doctor, Lord Highmount’s daughter and wife, Kate’s former fiancée, a mysterious military man who is masquerading as a servant and a shell-shocked private soldier. Just to complicate the story, Kate carries with her a mirror (handed down through her mother’s line) that can be used to foretell the future. The ghosts at the abbey are numerous but passive.

The plot seems to be a mishmash of a spy thriller, the paranormal (which seemed fairly ordinary to this reader) and an old-fashioned murder-in-a-country-house whodunnit.

It’s all a bit preposterous, if well-written, and apart from physical attacks and murder, there’s a raging storm, and some chasies through secret passages in the ancient abbey building. There’s even a crypt full of monks’ sarcophagi and skulls next to Lord Highmount’s cellars.

It’s Boys’ Own stuff, and the denouement is surprising, if a bit banal.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville