A murder mystery at a seaside hotel full of wealthy socialites who visit there every year, investigated by an older, unmarried woman with long connections to everyone - it sounds like the premise of a Miss Marple novel. But Timothy Findley layers on deeper and more complicated themes, against a background of 1980s Canada/US relations. The protagonist, Vanessa Van Horne, is an interesting character: a middle-aged woman with a heart condition, a survivor of a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Indonesia, a photographer and renowned landscape architect.

The political/corporate/CIA intrigue part of the book felt to me a bit overdone and hard to swallow, although there are elements heavily borrowed from real events. But I liked the way Findley showed the nuances of so many characters, and I found the conclusion satisfyingly unsatisfying.