Britain's baroness of crime offers us an updated version of a popular tale by her famed predecessor, Agatha Christie.

		"THE LIGHTHOUSE" By P.D. James Knopf ($25.95)

Titled "And Then There Were None" in America (the original 1939 British title used a racial slur), Christie's novel stranded a cast of English stock characters on an island where evil was loose.

P.D. James' island off Cornwall seems more benign. It's a private sanctuary for the well-heeled and well-connected who are well-tended by the live-in staff. The prime minister likes it as the site for an international conference.

The title is perhaps a homage to another British novelist, Virginia Woolf, and her fine 1927 novel, "To the Lighthouse."

It's the island's lighthouse where the body of successful -- and thoroughly repugnant -- novelist Nathan Oliver is found dangling with a noose around his neck. He had sought refuge on the island to finish editing his latest novel.

Because of the PM's interest in the island, Scotland Yard sends its best man, Adam Dalgliesh, to handle the business discreetly. A ruling of suicide would be nice, but, it turns out the miserable writer was murdered.

Dalgliesh utters, "I must insist that nobody leave the island," and questions the various inhabitants, a tidy way of allowing Ms. James to introduce her motley crew of characters.

The prime suspects are Miranda Oliver, the neglected, sloppy daughter of the deceased, and the dead man's assistant, the crippled Dennis Tremlett, who much like his name, shakes with fear at the approach of the tyrannical novelist.

What no one but the reader knows is that when Miranda and Dennis were found "in mild post-coital exhaustion" by Oliver, he banished the two from his life -- and bank account. The next day, he was dead.

Another candidate, Mark Yelland, a controversial medical researcher reviled in some quarters for experimenting on animals, argued hotly with Oliver the night before he died, but the spat seemed hardly worth killing over.

Dalgliesh and his two lieutenants, Kate Miskin and Francis Benton-Smith, have little else to go on, and so tread water for pages. With her mystery confined to a small island and a few uninteresting characters, this is one of Ms. James' dullest efforts.

Finally, somebody else on the island is killed, stirring us out of our torpor -- all of us, that is, but Dalgliesh, who is bedridden with SARS. His assistants are forced to carry the case forward.

Things really heat up when Miskin strips to her bloomers and coats herself with petroleum jelly as a grateful Benton-Smith lends a hand. She then slips through a barred window in the lighthouse, where the killer has taken a hostage.

When the truth emerges, it's a rather twisty story with a high degree of improbability involving Germans in World War II and a character's sex drive, earlier described as "held in check."

James' novels depend on character study and atmosphere rather than plot, but when the first two are under par, the plot weaknesses are more glaring.

At least fans of Dalgliesh can check on the state of his latest romantic venture while waiting for the TV version to hit "Mystery" on PBS.