The sole survivor; and, The Kynsard affair

The scenario of *The Sole Survivor* is reminiscent of Agatha Christie's *And Then There Were None*: one by one, six men stranded on a desert island are mysteriously killed. One man, "the sole survivor," is rescued and returned to civilization. His narrative, given in testimony in an English court, is an eerie tale of brutal killings, ill omens, and growing paranoia among the ever-dwindling number of survivors. He leaves unanswered the pertinent question: who or what was the killer? Was there a supernatural force imposing its inhospitable will on the island's unwitting guests? Was there a bloodthirsty savage--a stranger to them all--sequestered in a hidden island cave or inlet? Was there a schizophrenic Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde-like character among their number affecting innocence? As *The Kynsard Affair* opens, the body of a once-beautiful woman, her face brutally disfigured, is discovered in an abandoned car outside a London jailhouse. When the body is contradictorily identified as that of two different women--Barbara Kynsard and Betsy Trotwood--the detective on the case is compelled to unravel the mystery of the murder victim's true identity. Is she the lingerie modeling, hanger-on "friend" of a successful greengrocer, or the emotionally unstable, dilettantish wife of a prominent barrister? And if one, where is the other? Or could it be, as some suspect, that the two women are the bizarre dichotomous invention of one profoundly disturbed mind? >Who or what is the killer? Who is the victim? These are the elementary questions that keep plots twisting and turning to provide the reader with the best in intrigue and entertainment. Nowhere do they serve more splendidly than in this work.