THE VOICE OF THE CRAB

It's a long time since Charlotte Jay's just about classic Beat Not the Bones and ten years since her last book hybridizing crime, horror and the supernatural well before the latter became a contemporary commonplace. Once again on a remote Papuan island a handful of whites -- disappearing and dying off in unpredictable circumstances -- have to contend not only with the changing lifestyle but the residue of totems, spells, purri purri -- and themselves, beached in their private worlds. The story's not much fleshier than those crabs and cockroaches which scuttle all over but the atmosphere's superb.