The Last Visitor - by Martin Griffin (Hardcover)

About the Book

"An evocative, atmospheric thriller set on an uninhabited island, where a young woman must fight for survival while she works to discover who from her research team is really a killer."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

An evocative, atmospheric thriller set on an uninhabited island, where a young woman must fight for survival while she works to discover who from her research team is really a killer.

The island was abandoned for fifty years. So how did the body get there?

Three hundred miles from the mainland in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean lies Navigaceo: a tiny island that was hastily abandoned fifty years ago and has been uninhabited ever since. Until now.

Tess Macfarlane is a documentary filmmaker tasked with capturing the wild beauty of Navigaceo. Accompanied by a small team of researchers, her job is to film everything she sees.

But Tess sees too much: a body. It's clearly a recent murder. It shouldn't be there. And the victim is wearing the same expedition uniform as her colleagues.

Someone has been here already, and everyone on the team is a suspect. More than one of them could be a murderer. With five days until they are returned to the mainland, Tess must be careful--or hers might be the next body found on the shore. . . .

Review Quotes

Praise for The Second Stranger:

"Good premises can come easy; sustaining them across a novel's length is the trick. Martin Griffin does precisely this, and then some, in The Second Stranger, a Misery-evoking debut thriller set in the blizzard-blasted Scottish Highlands."-- "Shelf Awareness"

"A nasty February storm has cut off phone service at the remote MacKinnon Hotel in the Scottish Highlands. Suddenly, an injured man comes through the door, identifying himself as Police Constable Don Gaines and saying that he's been in a car accident--and that the dangerously manipulative inmate he was transporting from the local prison has escaped. Remie's own memories contribute to a sense that she, too, is keeping secrets from the reader. Are any of them telling the truth, and will any of them get out alive?"--Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review

"Clever and bold. The Second Stranger starts with a shiver of dangerous uncertainty before exploding into full on murder and mayhem. Anything you think you know, you don't."--Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"In this tense and absorbing chronicle, a documentary filmmaker flees a problematic past by rushing into a treacherous present. The Last Visitor is reminiscent of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, but Mr. Griffin's stylishly written white-knuckler, which culminates in a breathtaking abandoned-lighthouse sequence, creates an atmosphere all its own."--Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

"There's a lot more going on than a murder investigation in Griffin's highly atmospheric book, including the necessity for Tess to reconcile the secrets from her past with the exigencies of the present. The plot spins and spins. The best character is the island itself."--Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review

"A good mystery. The flashback narrative ends in an ingenious twist, and the dazzling climax of the present-tense mystery takes place in a Victorian-era lighthouse that rivals Stephen King's eeriest settings. The final showdown makes the extended sojourn worthwhile."--Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post

"A taut and inventive closed-circle whodunit. Griffin conjures a tense, paranoid atmosphere and steers the narrative in genuinely surprising directions. This sleek Agatha Christie update is a cut above similar fare."--Publishers Weekly

"Griffin has created an interesting variation on the locked-room mystery."--Booklist

"A worthy successor to Griffin's great debut, The Second Stranger. Inventive, thrilling and with a fine sense of place, The Last Visitor glistens with menace."--The Daily Mail

"A real tour de force. The Last Visitor is a perfect locked room mystery, with believable characters, razor-sharp dialogue and a desolate island setting that proves to be the stuff of nightmares. Martin Griffin has created a tale that grips you from start to finish."--Kate Rhodes, author of the bestselling Isles of Scilly Mysteries

About the Author

Martin Griffin, the author of the internationally acclaimed thriller The Second Stranger, is an exciting new voice in crime fiction. Before turning his hand to writing, he was a deputy headteacher and a doomed singer. Martin lives in Manchester with his wife and daughter.