The shadow of a gun lurks on a lonely windswept island

THERE is a moment, about three-quarters of the way through Carys Davies's third novel, Clear, so simultaneously startling and pleasing that I put the book down in delight.

- Fiona Roberts-Moore

In trepidation, too: this is a story with the electric hum of a thriller in a gentle key.

Davies, an award-winning short story writer, has a talent for creating slender masterpieces in historical settings: her first novel, West, was a fable-like tale about the exploration of America in the 19th century.

Clear, barely 150 pages long and a similar exercise in brevity, is set in Scotland in 1843 at the time of the Highland Clearances, when landowners forcibly uprooted the rural poor from their homes. But it is primarily about the power of human connection in unlikely circumstances. It begins with the perilous landing of Minister John Ferguson on a remote island beyond Shetland: nearer Norway than Aberdeen.

In need of money, he has taken on the unlikely job of evicting the island's sole remaining inhabitant. He comes alone, armed with his half-translated gospels, his wife's fruitcake - and a gun.