Written by ‘Jessica Fletcher’ & Donald Bain
SUMMARY:
Published in 1997 by Signet (a Penguin Group imprint), Donald Bain penned this original 304-page paperback in mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher’s first-person POV.
Invited as a celebrity guest lecturer, a nostalgic Jessica embarks on her second five-day voyage aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) from New York City to Southampton, England. Besides her two lectures, Jessica agrees to pen an interactive murder-mystery play to be performed onboard by a professional acting troupe.
Friction erupts amongst her fellow celebrity lecturers, with their venom directed towards notorious film actress Marla Tralaine amidst her mid-life career comeback. Also aboard is nasty TV network mogul Sam Teller (it’s easy to visualize someone like actor Ray Walston) and his sultry, eye-candy spouse: TV actress Lila Sims.
Jessica’s fellow lecturers are all employed by Teller, who naturally despise both their boss and Marla Tralaine to varying degrees. When Tralaine shockingly turns up dead, the ship’s crew relies upon Jessica for public relations help discreetly containing inevitable gossip and media leaks. While Jessica and her new friend, Mary Ward, probe the homicide’s peculiarities, a potential witness vanishes.
Until Scotland Yard can reach the still-at-sea vessel, Jessica contends with a slew of suspects — most of them are linked to the victim’s fresh-from-the-tabloids past.
REVIEW:
As compared to this insipid mystery, having Jessica Fletcher make a guest appearance on The Love Boat would have been preferable. Citing Jessica’s tiresome repetition of correcting others that this regal voyage is a ‘crossing, not a cruise,’ this whodunnit treads close to a condescending read … that is, until its preposterous final leg. By that point, fed-up readers may be gladly throwing themselves overboard.
Given the sumptuous details Donald Bain supplies his QE2, it’s a fair guess that he has been aboard the real vessel before. This element works well enough, as far as generating a visual backdrop for one’s imagination. Yet, apart from Mary Ward’s likable presence, this storyline is overrun by a bland assortment of caricatures conveniently posing as Jessica’s suspects.
Worse yet, the story’s fishnet of plot holes (i.e. why exactly Marla Tralaine’s nude corpse is found hidden) cover the range between contrived to utterly ridiculous. Murder on the QE2 finally capsizes on readers once Jessica & Mary devise their makeshift ‘play,’ so the lurid crime scene can be publicly reenacted in front of the ship’s crew and guests.
This hackneyed ‘big reveal’ falters badly, since the culprit (or possibly culprits) would have had such minimal incentive to commit at least one crime. Bain tries spicing up the unnecessary motive with hints of tawdry sex, but it’s the equivalent of a disappointing ‘sizzle ‘n’ fizzle.’ If anything, the book’s last third is an unforced error all too reminiscent of Murder, She Wrote’s worst episodes. Bain’s well-played epilogue offers faint compensation for his dreadful plot, but it’s too little too late.
Squandering its shipboard vibe, Jessica Fletcher’s eye-rolling murder-mystery cruise aboard the QE2 is more like hook, line, and stinker.
ADDITIONAL FEATURES:
There’s an eight-page preview of the next book in this series: 1998’s Murder, She Wrote: Murder in Moscow.
BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING: 2½ Stars
Note: A far more satisfying cruise murder-mystery novel is J.A. Jance’s Birds of Prey. It’s an Alaskan cruise worth sleuthing with her ex-Seattle cop, J.P. Beaumont.
