Pharos.

Pharos

Alice Thompson 

Berkley

ISBN 0425200205 $12.00, 160 pp.

Twenty-seven miles off the coast of Scotland lies the island that is the home to the Jacob's Rock Lighthouse. Cameron is the principal keeper of the lighthouse and he has been alone on the island so long that he is eagerly awaiting the boat that is bringing his new assistant. When Simon arrives, the two men quickly fall into a routine, which is broken when Simon rescues a young woman who has washed up on the rocks. When the woman regains consciousness, she has no memory of who she is or where she came from. The two men feed and clothe her and gradually she comes out of her apathetic state and takes notice of the world around her. She hears strange noises and constantly sees a young mulatto girl running around the island. Cameron insists she is imagining things and he keeps on telling her that until she is convinced that there is something evil on the island, something that Cameron is hiding from himself and her. Readers gradually get the feeling that there is something not quite right about the people who are living on Jacob's Rock. The shipwrecked woman comes to believe that the Principal Keeper does not want her to leave but she doesn't know why. There is a mystery about him that she intends to solve but there are other forces at work on the island that intend to have their way and there is nothing the amnesiac can do to stop them. Thus the audience receives an exciting gothic-like paranormal thriller that entertains from the moment the woman arrives on the rock.