A Fatal Crossing
ISBN: 9781529157840
Description
When an elderly gentleman is found dead at the foot of a staircase, ship's officer Timothy Birch is ready to declare it a tragic accident. But James Temple, a strong-minded Scotland Yard inspector, is certain there is more to this misfortune than meets the eye. Birch agrees to investigate, and the trail quickly leads to the theft of a priceless painting. Its very existence is known only to its owner . . . and the now dead man. With just days remaining until they reach New York, and even Temple's purpose on board the Endeavour proving increasingly suspicious, Birch's search for the culprit is fraught with danger. And all the while, the passengers continue to roam the ship with a killer in their midst.
Reviewed on 24th November 2024
I had been looking out for this first Tom Hindle novel for a while before coming across two copies together in a charity shop. I was imagining it to be the first in the series, but having read it, it seems I was wrong and these are standalone novels.
In this story, we meet an officer on a cross-Atlantic liner who is both unwilling and unwanted as assistant to a Scotland Yard detective who shows up just after a suspicious death aboard. It’s also 1924.
The narrative took me a few chapters to get into, and for a while I was thinking that I might have made a mistake in choosing this. But I was soon hooked and desperate to continue racing through. There is an element of old fashionedness to the narration, feeling like it’s intended to put one in mind of the 1920s, and I wasn’t sure this wasn’t more alienating than scene-setting. In a few places I found myself having to turn back and page and re-read because my eyes had skipped into skimming mode.
At the end though, I was very satisfied with what I’d experienced and found myself thinking about looking out for the next book.