It is also a pitch-perfect piece of writing. Inspired by the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers off the Hebrides in 1900, The Lamplighters is a whodunnit, horror novel, ghost story and fantastically gripping psychological investigation rolled into one. Interweaving the individual stories of the men’s last days on the rock with the women’s accounts of their lives then, now and in between, the immaculately paced narrative circles the central awful truth inside the abandoned lighthouse. Each defends her husband’s reputation and has her own reasons for keeping silent. Proud and pragmatic Helen, jumpy, depressed homebody Jenny and harried mother Michelle have kept each other at a prickly distance over the intervening years. Twenty years later, in an attempt to solve the stubborn mystery, a young writer of maritime adventure stories comes to interview the women the lighthousemen left behind – and thus is launched Emma Stonex’s superbly accomplished debut novel The Lamplighters. But Walker, principal keeper Arthur Black and their junior Vincent Bourne have all disappeared without trace, leaving the door barred, the table laid and the clocks stopped at a quarter to nine. On New Year’s Eve 1972, a boat arrives at the Maiden Rock lighthouse, 15 nautical miles southwest of Land’s End, to relieve assistant keeper and family man Bill Walker from a two-month tour of duty.
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