Serpent in paradise - Julian West

When Eva is sent to the island of her childhood
to photograph the bloody civil war, she faces her hardest assignment yet: her own history.The traumas of Eva's youth resurface in the decaying house where she grew up. Desperate to escape the memories, she seeks comfort with her lover, Navahiru. But just as she seems about to come to terms with those ghosts from her past, she begins an intense affair with an American colleague, Carl, and again her life tips into chaos. As the terror on the island escalates, she discovers that nothing is as it seems, and when Navahiru is abducted, Eva must face one final, horrifying truth.

JULIAN WEST is a distinguished war reporter. She has reported from Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India for the Daily Telegraph and divides her time between London and New Delhi, where she was the Sunday Telegraph's correspondent. Serpent in Paradise, published by Atlantic Books in 2007, is her first novel.

Lyrical descriptions of the island's staggering beauty are juxtaposed with an atmosphere of steamy paranoia, sex and violence. Think The Year of Living Dangerously in literary form.
The Fist Post - Laura Tennant

Neatly interweaving [the] strands, West navigates currents of sexual obsession and chaos.
Observer - Hephzibah Anderson

A gripping murder mystery and love story... Romantic and intense, written with impressive lyricism.
Eve