Daisy Darker

Alice Feeney

This is a wickedly fun riff on Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None.’ Instead of terrible people who are strangers to each other, we get terrible people who are family. Buckle up!

Our narrator is a young woman named Daisy Darker. Her family, estranged for years, is gathering at Seaglass, a shabby chic Victorian mansion in Cornwall, England. The house sits on a tidal island in Blacksand Bay. When the tide is high, the house is cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.

The reason for this ill-fated family reunion? It’s Nana’s 80th birthday — and her birthday party takes place on Halloween. When the guests arrive, already on edge and primed for confrontation, Nana announces that it’s not just a birthday party: She’s going to divulge the contents for her final will and testament.

The first family dinner is as damaged and dysfunctional as you suspect it will be. As a storm rolls in over the ocean, there’s equally dangerous thunder and lightning in the dining room. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, thick with distrust, and the house itself feels alive. Floors creak, corners emanate darkness. Just as Nana is about to read her will, a surprise guest arrives to further ratchet up the tension. Nana is delighted to see him — everyone else is… less enthusiastic.

They all eventually retreat to their bedrooms, startled awake by a scream at midnight. They find Nana dead on the floor of the kitchen. And a poem has been written on the chalkboard in what looks like Nana’s handwriting. It says in part,

• Daisy Darker’s family were as dark as dark can be.
• When one of them died, all of them lied, and pretended not to see.
• Daisy Darker’s nana was the oldest but least wise.
• The woman’s will made them all feel ill, which was why she had to die.

It goes on to make a cutting observation about each of the other family members, and ends with this:

• Daisy Darker’s family wasted far too many years lying.
• They spent their final hours together learning lessons before dying.

From the outset, Daisy, our narrator, is very sympathetic. Born with a heart defect, she’s survived against all odds — to her family’s chagrin. The only person to love her unconditionally was her Nana. Beatrice Darker is a bit eccentric. She has a sweet tooth and owns 80 clocks — one for each year of her life — to remind herself that her time is her own.

She’s also the bestselling author of children’s book, including her most famous work Daisy Darker’s Little Secret. It made Nana a small fortune and drove a wedge between Daisy and Nana on one side, and the rest of the family on the other. Author Alice Feeney does a bang-up job of introducing us to Daisy’s useless-slash-abusive parents, her selfish, grasping sisters, and the one nice family member: Her teenaged niece Trixie.

The plot is propelled forward by a ticking clock — the ones on the wall and the movements of the ocean. Each chapter begins with the time and how many hours are left until low tide. Periodically, more snippets of poetry appear as the guests die, one by one. Along the way to sorting out the identity of the killer, we get luscious backstory: the family’s relationship to the late-arriving guest, the history of the house, revelations of long-held secrets and betrayals.

It could all be too dark, but the recurring poems revel in a sinister glee, and in flashbacks, Nana is a source of sunshine. This is a whodunnit with heart and a delightfully surprising twist.

The stone Victorian house with its Gothic turrets and turquoise tiled roof appears to have been built from the same granite rocks it sits on. Pieces of blue-green glass still decorate some of the exterior walls, sparkling in the sunlight and gifting Seaglass its name. The mini mansion rises out of the crashing waves that surround it, perched upon its own tiny private island, just off the Cornish coast. Like a lot of things in life, it’s hard to find if you don’t know where to look. Hidden by crumbling cliffs and unmarked footpaths, in a small cove known locally as Blacksand Bay, it’s very much off the beaten track. This is not the Cornwall you see on postcards. — Alice Feeney

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