Review: A Fatal Crossing - Tom Hindle ***

A straightforward and workmanlike murder mystery, set on a 1920s transatlantic liner. After a passenger dies in suspicious circumstances, an uncomfortable combination of a mentally tortured ship's officer and a semi-disgraced Scotland Yard detective set out to uncover a rapidly evolving situation with missing paintings and more deaths.

The setting makes for a classic situation of being isolated - so the culprit(s) have to still be there - and claustrophobic, despite the size of the luxury liner. Tom Hindle does a solid job of bringing in the various characters, and the culprit is not obvious until close to the end, involving some clever misdirection.

I was slightly surprised by the cover claim that 'the action unfolds at a rip-roaring pace', as I found the pacing distinctly glacial, held up in part by the way the two detectives kept irritating each other, and by the ship's officer Birch's personal problems.

There is a dramatic twist at the end, though it was reasonably obvious what it was going to be before it happened. I felt that, compared with the slow pace of the rest, this was a little hurried, in that the implications of it weren't really carried through in the ending.

All in all, a good murder mystery that made for an entertaining enough read, but comparisons with Agatha Christie over-inflated both the cleverness of the plot and the detective story mechanics.

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