All my spare time the past two somewhat hectic days have been spent devouring a page turner The Bone Readers by Jacob Ross.

Several of my friends have said they are rationing themselves to two chapters at a time so they can savour the fine writing but I haven't the will power for that.

However, despite the greed of my intake, afterthoughts have lingered, because this is far more than a police procedural set in a thinly disguised Grenada, interlaced with sharp dialogue and poetic descriptions of locations and characters.

The thread that runs through the novel and remains in my mind is the cultural position of women, both the strong and the weak, in the island society, and the especial vulnerability of the adolescent woman,

Behind it all, for me, accustomed to long blood feuds and continuous divisive narrative lurks a question of whether the people of this commonwealth country have really blotted our so quickly the political events of 1983 and if they have, could they teach that ability to the rest of the world.