The Sinful Stones

by Peter Dickinson

Ebook, 2015

Status

Available

Call number

Fic Mystery Dickinson

Collection

Publication

Open Road Media

Description

Scotland Yard detective James Pibble travels to a remote Scottish island to free an old man from a dangerous cult of self-proclaimed saints and saviors in this mystery by CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson Ninety-two-year-old Sir Francis Francis summons James Pibble to an isolated island in the Hebrides to find out who pilfered the memoirs he was in the process of writing. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist was one of the builders of the first atom bomb. Is Francis senile? Paranoid? Was the manuscript really stolen? What's the real reason he sent for Pibble? As Pibble tries to untangle the mystery of the missing document, he starts to suspect that the devout millenarian religious sect inhabiting the island may be less virtuous than it seems; the community is strangely hell-bent on preventing Francis from ever leaving. It's up to Pibble to seek out the truth and find his own salvation before the walls of Jericho come tumbling down forever. The Sinful Stones is the 3rd book in the James Pibble Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member ehines
I've read a few folks complaining in reviews of other Pibble novels that the narrative is hard to follow. And it can be. There is something very allusive/elusive about Dickinson's interior monologue style. It sometimes verges on stream of consciousness, and so a sort of shorthand is often used, as
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we do when we think to ourselves. Dickinson contrives to make the allusions comprehensible, but it isn't always a quick or easy process. Also the books are very much mid-twentieth-century English, and early-twenty-first-century Americans are bound to miss some things.

That aside, the books can be very, very good. This one isn't the best of them, but it is a solid effort. Dickinson had a weakness for putting Pibble into very strange situations. Some of those situations (a theme park, (as here) a cult compound) really detract and distract from Dickinson's strengths as a writer. The more institutional ones (a rare disease clinic, an elder care facility) bring out the best in him.
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Awards

Local notes

James Pibble, 3

DDC/MDS

Fic Mystery Dickinson

Other editions

The Seals by Peter Dickinson (Paperback)

Rating

(10 ratings; 3.4)
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