Death on the Island

Finished July 12

Death on the Island by Lynne Marie Taylor

This historical mystery is set in Malta in the fall of 1880, a time when Malta was controlled by the British. The main character in this series, of which this is the second book, is Scottish Detective Inspector McQueen. He is in Malta to set up a detective division in the local police and train local officers in this aspect of police services. Recently a steamship travelling from India to Britain stopped here and one of the stewards was found to have cholera. The first class passengers were put into quarantine, on a small island near Valetta dedicated for this purpose called Manoel Island. When a dead man is found floating in the harbour, with a fatal knife wound, he is soon identified as Buchanan, one of the passengers who should have been in quarantine. McQueen and the police doctor go into quarantine to question the other passengers and because they were both exposed to the body. Buchanan was accompanying a Sikh prince who was raised in England back to England after he was refused entry to India. The prince is an obvious suspect here since he was unhappy with the circumstances. 

Marie Talti is the daughter of the owner of one of the two local papers, a weekly, and she works as both a journalist and editor, actively assisting her father. With limited resources, McQueen asks her to investigate the passengers and their backgrounds for him, and she agrees, hoping this will offer her paper an edge. 

This novel deals with difficult historical events, racial and ethnic prejudice, sexual predation, and gender roles. So there's a lot of interesting plot and characters, and I learned some history I wasn't aware of. 

I picked it up to meet a couple of reading challenges and am glad I did.