A Fatal Crossing: Agatha Christie meets Titanic in this unputdownable mystery

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Staying motivated could also be tough, especially while trying to fit in my writing around a busy day-job. But at least, that made him have something in common with the other characters because they were just as flat. I was drawn to A Fatal Crossing first by the cover, then when I saw that it was a Golden Age-style mystery novel set at sea in the 1920s, I was even more interested!

With a better cover blurb this could and should have been a classic – the solutions of more than one famous mystery but in reverse! News of the death of a passenger travels rapidly among the passengers, raising speculation as to the elderly man's identity and cause of death. An award winning author, a museum exhibit designer, an underwater explorer, and an inductee in the Women Diver's Hall of Fame, Valerie (V. nearly a dozen relatives from the United States and India gathered at a funeral home, and a local Indian priest performed final rites. When the body of an elderly passenger is found at the bottom of a flight of stairs on board the Endeavour - a liner sailing from Southampton to New York - ship’s officer Birch is tasked with assisting an onboard police officer with his investigation.Valerie van Heest has conducted archaeological expeditions on some of the Great Lakes most significant shipwrecks over the past 25 years. Birch is our narrator, and as we only see things from his point of view, Temple comes across as bad-tempered, rude and hostile, but there are hints that there’s more to each character than meets the eye. Partly, it's due to the execution, the book feels about 50-75 pages too long, a lot of the action feels a bit repetitive (there's a lot of questioning people in cabins about the same things) and the writing style falls a little flat, with characters never fully fleshed out or memorable enough.

When the ship's been underway for only two days, an older gentleman suddenly dies and the circumstances are pretty dubious.The plot was just ramming in character after character all of whom could be the killer so like 'Mystery' all of whom by the way were pointless pastiches too. Birch is supposed to be more interesting because the reader learns early on that SOMETHING tragic happened in this past that he is still not over yet. I would describe it as more noir than cosy in feel and, although not an authentic golden age mystery, it evoked the setting well. An autopsy determined they had died from exposure to the cold, an outcome that appeared predetermined as soon as they lost their way. I hope these individuals will never be forgotten and van Heest has done an incredible service to these families in bringing this accident to the public's attention.