When it comes to the high seas, I prefer my voyages to be vicarious. I have been known to get seasick on a slow ferry. My antipathy toward those flashy floating malls they call “luxury liners” is balanced by my fascination with all those YouTube videos of people taking and rating one cruise after another – I call it “cruise porn.” There’s something fascinatingly repellent about the excess of cruise life: every year, thousands of people willingly shell out big bucks to entomb themselves in a stateroom the size and shape of a shipping container and brave the tidal swell to binge eat twenty-three hours of the day. Give me a pleasant hotel room on solid ground and theatre tickets every evening; that’s my idea of vacation heaven!

And so, when Kemper Donovan dedicated his latest mystery Loose Lips to his parents, Daniel and Maureen, “neither of whom would ever dream of setting foot on a cruise,” I knew immediately that I would like these people. I certainly like their son, a fellow Christie fanatic, co-creator and host of the podcast All About Agatha, and the author of The Busy Body, a mystery inspired by the Queen of Crime, one that introduced us to a most unusual sleuth, or sleuth’s “sidekick” – a culture-obsessed, pleasantly snarky ghostwriter with a few mysteries of her own up her sleeve, including, for the moment, her real name. 

At the start of Loose Lips, things have progressed for our heroine since her first adventure. For one thing, she seems to have written a best-selling mystery called – wait for it! – The Busy Body, a chronicle of the three murders that occurred in Vermont which the ghostwriter helped solve. And now that she has published her own novel, she has given herself a pen name, “Belle Currer”. Those who know Kemper will recognize this as a cheeky homage to one of his favorite classic novels, Jane Eyre. (Charlotte Bronte published under the name “Currer Bell.”)

Belle’s success has led to an offer from Payton Garrett, an old frenemy of hers from her MFA days. At school, their relationship was a struggle between comradery and competition. And now, while Belle has carved out a fair reputation as a writer while keeping any meaningful relationships at bay, Payton has become a hugely successful author and has traded her husband in for a beautiful female poet. She is leading a cruise called Get Lit, targeting as her guests those superrich women who want to hobnob with authors and learn more about their favorite genres in a one-week seminar of their choice on memoir, poetry, young adult fiction, romance, or mystery writing. And guess who is leading the mystery seminar??

From the moment the good ship Merman Rivera sets sail from the Port of New York, things do not bode well for Belle: she is struck by a bout of seasickness (I can relate!), her seminar is poorly attended, and one of those attendees is adamant that Belle read and edit the enormous manuscript she brought along. There is also plenty of tension running between assorted characters among the staff and guest list, which I’m happy to say leads to murder most foul, perpetrated in a way that will make all classic mystery fans sit up and take notice.

The first death is followed by a second and a third, wreaking havoc on Get Lit. Fortunately for Belle and everyone else, the ship’s doctor, Joan Chen, is not only a wizard at combating nausea, she is an avid mystery fan who can’t wait to sink her teeth into a good murder case. And fortunately for Joan, she doesn’t have to go it alone:

“I tagged along to watch – also, because tagging along is what sidekicks do. The sooner I was honest with myself about my role, the better. If I was going to be Hastings, I could at least be a self-aware Hastings. And this way, I could take pride in my superior taste in amateur sleuths: first Dorothy Gibson, now Joan Chen.”

The classic crime tropes fly fast and furious here, along with a plethora of amusing allusions to popular culture, past and present.  As you might imagine, shades of Agatha Christie abound here as well. Kemper would almost certainly agree with me that there is no mystery set on a cruise quite as satisfying as Death on the Nile, and that classic has inspired certain aspects of this plot. I don’t want to give them all away, but a central feature that both novels share is the invasion aboard ship of an unwelcome guest. Nile had Jacqueline de Bellefort, furious at Linnet Doyle for stealing her fiancé. In Loose Lips, we meet Flora Fortescue, who once was the third side of Belle and Payton’s dysfunctional platonic triangle. Now Flora has crashed the cruise party, seeking revenge against Payton for stealing something most dear and keeping it for herself. Instead of a modern-day Simon Doyle, however, Flora accuses Payton of stealing her long-gestating idea for a novel based on the scandalous relationship between Lord Byron and his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and turning it into her own best-seller. 

Ultimately, the story follows its own twist-filled path, and since Belle had a tangled relationship with both Payton and Flora, her ties to this case are even closer than in The Busy Body. While a good mystery requires an intriguing puzzle and an interesting assortment of characters to go with it, throwing in a theme or two makes for good lit: here, the theme is friendship, specifically the friendships between women – those from the past that we fall back into easily, despite the scars they carry, and the harder-won friendships of adulthood. 

Which brings me to one of my favorite aspects of the Ghostwriter series: the feature of rotating sleuths. This is a series where the “Hastings” is the star, and each “guest” detective has a distinctive modus operandi and a different effect on Belle. Dorothy Gibson, from The Busy Body, was an accomplished politician, a real “Hillary” type; her relationship with the Ghostwriter, though extremely cordial, was as boss to employee. Joan Chen is the consummate best friend, and she and Belle feel more like tag-team partners than Holmes and Watson. 

I won’t give anything more away, but before Loose Lips reaches its conclusion, Belle is put through the ringer and will need all the friends she can get. I’m happy to say we learn a lot more – but not everything – about this intriguing woman, and I can’t help hoping that each new case unearths more of her back story and propels her further toward a, hopefully, happy future. 

Loose Lips is available for pre-order and will be in stores and online January 21.