I won’t pretend that I haven’t always been a fan of the ‘location thriller’, as it’s refereed to these days, and I’ve particularly been a fan of those where the location is an island, in other words an isolated spot somewhere in the real world, but where unless you’ve got the means, it can be really difficult to get away again. When danger threatens on a isolated island, you’ve got a real problem.
Of course, I’m far from the first thriller writer to pick up on this, so that will be the big gist of today’s blogpost: dark and scary fiction set on islands. In fact, I’m going to pick ten thriller novels and ten horror novels that make the best possible use of their island locations. So, that should be a bit of fun.
Before then, a quick reminder about a few other titles that I’ve got coming out this year.
Other stuff
First of all, as you’ll have seen from the image at the top of today’s column, my eighth Heck novel, ROGUE, is at last getting the Audible treatment. I’m delighted to announce that it will be out on August 21 and will be narrated by the ever popular Paul Thornley, who did such a sterling job with all the other Heck Audibles. I cannot stress how much fan-mail I’ve had begging and pleading that it would be Paul who took on the acting job for ROGUE. The truth is, and has always been, that I have no control over who gets that gig. It’s always fun to hear the audition tapes and be asked my opinion, but I doubt my word counts for much. But I will say that on this occasion I did request Paul, and it looks as though WF Howes Ltd (the Audible publisher) have come through for me.
I’m hoping they’ll be able to recruit Paul again for NO QUARTER (Heck #9), but it’s a bit early to talk about that one yet.
Another publication due later this year (October 9), THE DEVIL’S KNIGHT, will see me flip back into my historical author persona, PW Finch. It commences the two-volume story of Thurstan Wildblood, a knight in the personal guard of Richard the Lionheart, who, during the chaos and bloodshed of the Third Crusade, encounters a mysterious, demonic bishop and is promised invincibility on the battlefield in return for his soul. From this point on, or so it seems, Thurstan cannot be defeated, but increasingly he fears that Hell awaits him.
When he is put in charge of Melinda of Jerusalem, a young female captive with the power to heal wounds simply by prayer, and ordered to return her to England, it’s a task he initially resists, though in due course, he starts to believe that it might save him from damnation. However, the road home is fraught with danger, because also in pursuit of Melinda are the elite and zealous blades of the Assassin sect, the battle-hardened longswords of the Knights Templar, and most dangerous of all, the Order of Siegfried, a mercenary band loyal to the German Emperor, who will literally stop at nothing to achieve their scheming master’s aims.
Thurstan Wildblood thinks he knows evil, thinks he’s seen it all. But in fact, he hasn’t seen anything yet.
Okay, that’s THE DEVIL’S KNIGHT. It’s published on October 9, and is the first in the Thurstan Wildblood series, the second one out next year. More details on that when I get it.
Now, back to those...
ISLANDS IN THE SCREAM
Island settings have always worked in thriller fiction. And as the concept of the ‘location thriller’ is now a real thing, I reckon we’ll see a lot more of them in the near future.
For what it’s worth, here’s a quick thumbnail of my own forthcoming novel, THE ISLAND (published on Sept 1). A bunch of disgraced ex-cops join a support group, and are whisked away for a timely break on a glorious, mostly uninhabited island in the Scillies. It isn’t long after they’ve arrived, however, when the first body shows up, and they start to wonder what the real reason for this gathering is.
Sorry ... that’s it. No further spoilers when we are this close to home.
Of course, as I’ve already said, remote islands settings are nothing new.
Agatha Christie’s seminal island chiller, And Then There Were None (1939), set on Burgh Island, just off the Devonshire coast, is still the best-selling crime novel in history. Peter Benchley’s Jaws (1974), set on fictional Amity Island just off New England, emptied seaside bathing areas across the Northern Hemisphere for several years afterwards, especially when the blockbuster movie version came out. In Jurassic Park (1990), Michael Crichton warned about the dangers of genetic meddling when it saw the fictional Isla Nublar near Costa Rica transformed into a dinosaur safari park. But perhaps the Big Daddy of all island-set horror novels is William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), which saw a bunch of English schoolboys marooned in the Tropical Pacific and gradually revert to a savage hunter-killer existence. It is regarded as a true classic in dark literature.
We obviously won’t mention any of these examples in the following checklist. For one thing, they’re already very well known. However, here are a few others in order of publication (the blurbs accompanying them provided by the publishers).
As I said: ten island-bound thrillers, and ten island-bound horrors.
You never know... you might encounter some new titles here, and could just be able to acquire them before you set off on your summer holiday - to that island paradise that looked so deceptively charming in the brochure.
THRILLERS SET ON ISLANDS
1. EVIL UNDER THE SUN by Agatha Christie (1941)
‘It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, there is evil everywhere under the sun.’
It was not unusual to find the beautiful bronzed body of the sun-loving Arlena Stuart stretched out on a beach, face down. Only, on this occasion, there was no sun… she had been strangled.
Ever since Arlena’s arrival at the swish resort on the island off the Devon coast, Hercule Poirot had detected sexual tension in the seaside air. But could this apparent ‘crime of passion’ have been something more evil and premeditated altogether?
2. SHUTTER ISLAND by Dennis Lehane (2003)
US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island in Boston Harbour, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to find an escaped murderer named Rachel Solando.
As a killer hurricane bears down on the island, the investigation deepens and the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? And what really goes on in Ward C?
The closer Teddy gets to the truth, the more elusive it becomes. And the more he begins to believe that he may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive him insane...
3. PIG ISLAND
by Mo Hayder (2006)
SEE EVIL
SEE EVIL
Journalist Joe Oakes makes a living exposing supernatural hoaxes. But what he sees when he visits a secretive religious community on a remote Scottish island forces him to question everything he thought he knew.
HEAR EVIL
Why have the islanders been accused of Satanism? What has happened to their leader? And why will no one discuss the strange creature seen wandering the lonely beaches of Pig Island?
READ EVIL
In PIG ISLAND, Mo Hayder dares you to face your fears head on and to look at what lurks beneath the surface of everyday normality. Because ordinary people are perfectly capable of doing unspeakable things to each other...
4. DEVIL SHARKS
HEAR EVIL
Why have the islanders been accused of Satanism? What has happened to their leader? And why will no one discuss the strange creature seen wandering the lonely beaches of Pig Island?
READ EVIL
In PIG ISLAND, Mo Hayder dares you to face your fears head on and to look at what lurks beneath the surface of everyday normality. Because ordinary people are perfectly capable of doing unspeakable things to each other...
4. DEVIL SHARKS
by Chris Jameson (2018)
A pleasure cruise in paradise leads a group of friends to a shark-infested Hell...
When Alex Simmons is invited to a college reunion in the Hawaiian islands aboard the private yacht of his old pal Harry Curtis, he is not sure what to expect. The two men had a falling-out years ago over the suicide of one of their friends. Could this be Harry’s way of making amends? Or is something more sinister in store? The crew sets sail and arrives at Orchid Atoll, the site of a deserted former Coast Guard station. But they are far from alone...
Out here, three hundred miles from civilization, Alex and his friends are about to encounter two very different brands of evil - one human, the other with fins - unlike anything they could have possibly imagined. They have entered a place where there’s no law, no mercy... and no way out.
5. A HOUSE OF GHOSTS by WC Ryan (2018)
Winter 1917. As the First World War enters its most brutal phase, back home in England, everyone is seeking answers to the darkness that has seeped into their lives.
At Blackwater Abbey, on an island off the Devon coast, Lord Highmount has arranged a spiritualist gathering to contact his two sons who were lost in the conflict. But as his guests begin to arrive, it gradually becomes clear that each has something they would rather keep hidden. Then, when a storm descends on the island, the guests will find themselves trapped. Soon one of their number will die.
For Blackwater Abbey is haunted in more ways than one...
6. THE GUEST LIST
A pleasure cruise in paradise leads a group of friends to a shark-infested Hell...
When Alex Simmons is invited to a college reunion in the Hawaiian islands aboard the private yacht of his old pal Harry Curtis, he is not sure what to expect. The two men had a falling-out years ago over the suicide of one of their friends. Could this be Harry’s way of making amends? Or is something more sinister in store? The crew sets sail and arrives at Orchid Atoll, the site of a deserted former Coast Guard station. But they are far from alone...
Out here, three hundred miles from civilization, Alex and his friends are about to encounter two very different brands of evil - one human, the other with fins - unlike anything they could have possibly imagined. They have entered a place where there’s no law, no mercy... and no way out.
5. A HOUSE OF GHOSTS by WC Ryan (2018)
Winter 1917. As the First World War enters its most brutal phase, back home in England, everyone is seeking answers to the darkness that has seeped into their lives.
At Blackwater Abbey, on an island off the Devon coast, Lord Highmount has arranged a spiritualist gathering to contact his two sons who were lost in the conflict. But as his guests begin to arrive, it gradually becomes clear that each has something they would rather keep hidden. Then, when a storm descends on the island, the guests will find themselves trapped. Soon one of their number will die.
For Blackwater Abbey is haunted in more ways than one...
6. THE GUEST LIST
by Lucy Foley (2020)
On an island off the windswept Irish coast, guests gather for the wedding of the year – the marriage of Jules Keegan and Will Slater.
Old friends.
Past grudges.
Happy families.
Hidden jealousies.
Thirteen guests.
One body.
The wedding cake has barely been cut when one of the guests is found dead. And as a storm unleashes its fury on the island, everyone is trapped.
All have a secret. All have a motive.
One guest won’t leave this wedding alive...
7. THE BLACKHOUSE by Peter May (2020)
A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith.
A MURDER
Detective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past.
A SECRET
Something lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister.
A TRAP
As Fin investigates, old skeletons begin to surface, and soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted.
8. LOOK BOTH WAYS by Linwood Barclay (2022)
They think as one. They act as one. They kill as one.
The residents of Garrett Island off the coast of Massachusetts are part of a ground-breaking experiment. For a month, their cars will be replaced by self-driving vehicles – voice-controlled, comfortable and safe.
Single mum Sandra is prepping for the huge media event, and she’s ready for a driverless future. Widowed after her husband fell asleep at the wheel, she’s relieved that her kids may never need to drive themselves.
But as the day gets underway, disaster strikes. A journalist vanishes, possibly murdered. And before long, it’s clear something is very wrong. The cars are no longer taking orders from their passengers. They’re starting to organise. They’re starting to hunt. And they’ve got the residents of Garrett Island in their sights.
9. THE ISLAND by Adrian McKinty (2022)
On an island off the windswept Irish coast, guests gather for the wedding of the year – the marriage of Jules Keegan and Will Slater.
Old friends.
Past grudges.
Happy families.
Hidden jealousies.
Thirteen guests.
One body.
The wedding cake has barely been cut when one of the guests is found dead. And as a storm unleashes its fury on the island, everyone is trapped.
All have a secret. All have a motive.
One guest won’t leave this wedding alive...
7. THE BLACKHOUSE by Peter May (2020)
A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith.
A MURDER
Detective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past.
A SECRET
Something lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister.
A TRAP
As Fin investigates, old skeletons begin to surface, and soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted.
8. LOOK BOTH WAYS by Linwood Barclay (2022)
They think as one. They act as one. They kill as one.
The residents of Garrett Island off the coast of Massachusetts are part of a ground-breaking experiment. For a month, their cars will be replaced by self-driving vehicles – voice-controlled, comfortable and safe.
Single mum Sandra is prepping for the huge media event, and she’s ready for a driverless future. Widowed after her husband fell asleep at the wheel, she’s relieved that her kids may never need to drive themselves.
But as the day gets underway, disaster strikes. A journalist vanishes, possibly murdered. And before long, it’s clear something is very wrong. The cars are no longer taking orders from their passengers. They’re starting to organise. They’re starting to hunt. And they’ve got the residents of Garrett Island in their sights.
9. THE ISLAND by Adrian McKinty (2022)
YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF UNTIL THEY COME FOR YOUR FAMILY.
After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom.
When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram. But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.
When Heather and the kids are separated from Tom, they are forced to escape alone, seconds ahead of their pursuers. Now it’s up to Heather to save herself and the kids, even though they don’t trust her, the harsh bushland is filled with danger, and the locals want her dead.
Heather has been underestimated her entire life, but she knows that only she can bring her family home again and become the mother the children desperately need, even if it means doing the unthinkable to keep them all alive.
by Johana Gustawsson (2024)
Don’t
Don’t
Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.
Emma must work alone, and with the Gussman family apparently avoiding her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to hide?
Trust
As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants.
When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and memories of his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could this young woman's tragic death somehow hold the key?
Anyone
Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past – Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia's deepest, darkest winter…
HORRORS SET ON ISLANDS
1. THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU
by HG Wells (1896)
Adrift in a dinghy, Edward Prendick, the single survivor from the good ship Lady Vain, is rescued by a vessel carrying a profoundly unusual cargo - a menagerie of savage animals.
Adrift in a dinghy, Edward Prendick, the single survivor from the good ship Lady Vain, is rescued by a vessel carrying a profoundly unusual cargo - a menagerie of savage animals.
Tended to recovery by their keeper Montgomery, who gives him dark medicine that tastes of blood, Prendick soon finds himself stranded upon an uncharted island in the Pacific with his rescuer and the beasts. Here, he meets Montgomery's master, the sinister Dr. Moreau - a brilliant scientist whose notorious experiments in vivisection have caused him to abandon the civilised world.
It soon becomes clear he has been developing these experiments - with truly horrific results.
2. WEB by John Wyndham (1979)
A millionaire English lord dreams of founding a Utopian community on a remote Pacific island. Among the 40-odd men and women selected for the project are a pestologist named Camilla and the narrator.
2. WEB by John Wyndham (1979)
A millionaire English lord dreams of founding a Utopian community on a remote Pacific island. Among the 40-odd men and women selected for the project are a pestologist named Camilla and the narrator.
Within hours of the group’s arrival on the sunny isle, their radio has been destroyed.
Within days, several members of the group are dead.
Dream turns to nightmare as they discover the island is overrun by a spider species programmed to resist and dominate any invader.
3. THE WOMAN IN BLACK by Susan Hill (1983)
Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House.
The house stands at the end of a causeway off the Northumbrian coast. Quite often it’s cut off by the tide, becoming a desolate island, but at all times it is wreathed in fog and mystery.
But it is not until he glimpses a wasted young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose.
by Douglas Clegg (1991)
What calls to the children from within the dark shadows of the shack called Neverland?
What lurks within the shack? What kinds of dangerous — and deadly — games do the children play there?
For years, the Jackson family vacationed at their matriarch’s old Victorian house on Gull Island, a place of superstition and legend off the southern coast of the US. One particular summer, young Beau follows his cousin Sumter into a shack hidden among the brambles and windswept trees near bluffs overlooking the sea.
What calls to the children from within the dark shadows of the shack called Neverland?
What lurks within the shack? What kinds of dangerous — and deadly — games do the children play there?
For years, the Jackson family vacationed at their matriarch’s old Victorian house on Gull Island, a place of superstition and legend off the southern coast of the US. One particular summer, young Beau follows his cousin Sumter into a shack hidden among the brambles and windswept trees near bluffs overlooking the sea.
And within Neverland, the mysteries and terror grow...
by Stephen King (2008)
When Edgar Freemantle moves to the remote island of Duma Key, off Florida’s coast, to escape his past, he doesn’t expect to find much there.
When Edgar Freemantle moves to the remote island of Duma Key, off Florida’s coast, to escape his past, he doesn’t expect to find much there.
But Duma has been waiting for him, and something in the view from his window urges him to discover a talent he never knew he had.
Edgar Freemantle begins to paint. And as he paints, the island’s secrets begin to stir. Secrets of children lost in the undertow, of a ghost ship riding the distant horizon - and a family’s buried past reaching long hands into the present.
by Brian Keene (2011)
They came to the deserted South Pacific island to compete on a popular reality television show. Each one hoped to be the last to leave. Now they're just hoping to stay alive, because the island isn’t deserted after all.
They came to the deserted South Pacific island to compete on a popular reality television show. Each one hoped to be the last to leave. Now they're just hoping to stay alive, because the island isn’t deserted after all.
Contestants are disappearing, but they aren’t being eliminated by the game. They’re being taken by the monstrous, half-human creatures that live deep in the jungle. The men will be slaughtered. The women will be kept alive as captives.
Night is falling, the creatures are coming, and rescue is so far away...
by Nick Cutter (2014)
He felt something touch his hand. Which is when he looked down.
For the scouts of Troop 52, three days of camping, hiking and survival lessons on Canada’s Falstaff Island is as close as they’ll get to a proper holiday.
He felt something touch his hand. Which is when he looked down.
For the scouts of Troop 52, three days of camping, hiking and survival lessons on Canada’s Falstaff Island is as close as they’ll get to a proper holiday.
Which was when he saw it.
But when an emaciated figure stumbles into their camp asking for food, the trip takes a horrifying turn. The man is not just hungry, he’s sick. Sick in a way they have never seen before.
Which was when he screamed.
Cut off from the mainland, the troop face a terror far worse than anything they could have made up around a campfire. To survive they will have to fight their fears, the elements... and eventually each other.
8. THE FORGOTTEN ISLAND by David Sodergren (2018)
When Ana Logan agrees to go on holiday to Thailand with her estranged sister Rachel, she hopes it will be a way for them to reconnect after years of drifting apart.
But now, stranded on a seemingly deserted island paradise with no radio and no food, reconciliation becomes a desperate fight for survival.
For when night falls on The Forgotten Island, the dark secrets of the jungle reveal themselves.
Something is watching them from the trees.
Something ancient.
Something evil.
by Hunter Shea (2020)
Sometimes, the dead are best left in peace.
Sometimes, the dead are best left in peace.
Jessica Backman has been called to help a strange family living on a haunted island in Charleston Harbour, South Carolina. Ormsby Island was the site of a brutal massacre two decades ago, and now the mysterious Harper family needs someone to exorcise the ghosts that still call it home.
The phantoms of over one hundred children cannot rest. But something far more insidious is living on the island.
When the living and the dead guard their true intentions, how can Jessica discover just what sort of evil lurks on Ormsby Island? And why is Jessica the only one who can plumb its dark depths?
10. THE WHISTLING by Rebecca Netley (2021)
When Elspeth arrives on a remote Scottish island to become nanny to a young child, she hopes to bond with her. Until she learns that, for reasons no one will explain, Mary has not spoken for months.
And the girl’s silence is not the only mystery.
Hypnotic lullabies drift down empty corridors.
Strange dolls appear in abandoned rooms.
And as the nights draw in, darker questions arise . . .
What happened to Mary's late twin, William? Why did their previous nanny disappear so suddenly?
And is the whistling Elspeth hears at night just the storm outside?
Or is somebody coming for her.... ?