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About the author: (from Goodreads): Mignon Good (1899-1996) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1929 her first crime novel was published featuring 'Sarah Keate', a nurse and 'Lance O'Leary', a police detective. This couple appeared in another four novels. Over the next forty years she wrote a novel nearly every year. In 1971 she won the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America.
Major characters:
- Nonie Hovenden, due to be married
- Royal Beadon, her fiancé, owner of the island estate (Mr. Wrong)
- Hermione Shaw, owner of the adjacent estate
- Jim Shaw, Hermione's nephew (Mr. Right)
- Lydia Bassett, a sultry widow
- Aurelia Beadon, Royal's sister
- Major Dick Fenby, estate manager for Hermione
- Dr. Riordan
- Seabury Jenkins, Magistrate
Locale: Beadon Island in the Caribbean
Synopsis: Nonie Hovenden is engaged to much-older Royal Beadon, owner of a sugar cane plantation, Beadon Gates, on Beadon Island in the Caribbean. The wedding is in three days. Nonie is pleased but not too excited about it, and just sees it as her inevitable destiny as her family (just a distant aunt) urges her to accept.
Adjacent to Beadon Gates is the only other plantation on the island: Middle Road Plantation, owned by domineering Hermione Shaw. She employs her nephew, Jim Shaw, as an errand boy although he is supposed to be assuming management from her. She also employs hard-drinking Major Dick Fenby as the manager.
Nonie and Jim hit it off immediately in a case of love at first sight. Jim, frustrated with working for Hermione, heads off to a job in New York. At the last moment, he decides to face up to things, remain on the island, and along with Nonie will tell Royal the wedding is off.
At the same time a terrific rainstorm and building hurricane hits the island. Dick Fenby is visiting Royal, and Nonie offers to drive him back to Middle Road Plantation. They arrive to find Hermoine dead - shot - on her front steps. And Jim is inside the house with a gun.
Review: This is a great ready for a rainy, stormy night. It just so happened I got a rainy, windy night to finish this one and it was perfect.
Eberhart paints the Caribbean scene skillfullly, and the reader can feel the heat, rain, and lushness of the tropical environment. She describes the Beadon home perfectly, and the constant struggle to keep any house operating and maintained in such a high-temp, high-humidity environment.
A little suspension of disbelief is in order when Nonie drops her planned marriage to rock-steady Royal just days before, for a flighty love-at-first-sight Jim. I was surprised when Royal calmly accepts her change of heart, reacting with about the same emotion as a change in the dinner menu; but he comes through it like a man and even shakes hands with Jim.
The climax of the story and the climax of the storm occur simultaneously, with the characters creeping around a dark (the power is out) house in the middle of the hurricane.
Major Dick Fenby is a bit of a cardboard character - he is Hermoine's estate manager, and also the chief of police, but most of the time he is just drunk. Confronted with a murder, he is not too sure exactly what to do. The story could have been stronger if these two roles were divided into two characters.
A map would have been helpful - it was a bit unclear where the various scenes were, or if they were even on the same island.
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