cover image Sun, Sand, and Murder

Sun, Sand, and Murder

John Keyse-Walker. Minotaur, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-1-250-08829-1

Keyse-Walker’s appealing debut, set in Anegada, the northernmost of the British Virgin Islands, won the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award in 2015. Since the island has not had a murder since 1681, Teddy Creque, a special constable in the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force, has no experience to draw on when Paul Kelliher, an American professor studying the local iguanas, is shot to death on a quiet beach. Creque’s rigid superior, Deputy Commissioner Howard Lane, reprimands Creque, who moved the body to a tent to protect it from the voracious crabs and gulls, for altering the crime scene. Creque, who gets nowhere when he tries to notify the victim’s next of kin, believes that Kelliher was involved in treasure hunting, but Lane is convinced drug traffic is more likely and calls in the Drug Enforcement Agency from the U.S. Creque, with his honor and job at stake, rises to the challenge of catching a killer, but he succeeds only at great personal cost in the surprise ending. [em](Sept.) [/em]