The Widow’s Cruise
A review of The Widow’s Cruise by Nicholas Blake – 240810
An artist, especially a sculptor, is trained to observe the physiognomy of their subjects. The trained eye of Clare Massinger, the girlfriend of Nigel Strangeways, makes a telling and ultimately vital contribution to the resolution of the thirteenth novel in Blake’s series, originally published in 1959.
In order to restore her artistic mojo, Nigel suggests that they both go on a cruise on the Menelaos around the Greek islands. Being stuck on board a cruise ship, prison with the option of drowning, allows Blake to assemble a colourful group of characters including a chatty blackmailer, Ivor Bentnick-Jones, a Greek scholar, Jeremy Street, the Bishop of Solway and his wife, and the oleaginous cruise manager, Nikki. However, the disruptive influences and the ones who drive the plot are two sisters, Ianthe Ambrose and Melissa Blaydon, teenage twins, Faith and Peter Trubody, and a 10-year-old girl, Primrose Chalmers, who amuses herself by spying on the passengers and making notes in her journal.
Ostensibly, the Ambrose sisters are chalk and cheese, Melissa a widow and the archetypal femme fatale who has men falling all over her and Ianthe, the highly strung academic and failed teacher who left her last post under a cloud. Ianthe despises Jeremy Street, casting doubts on his scholarship and penning a vitriolic review of his latest work in The Journal of Classical Studies, and, to her horror, she finds that a former pupil, Faith Trubody, whose expulsion she was instrumental in, is on board. Peter Trubody, swears revenge.
There are more than enough people with reason to do away with Ianthe and it comes as no surprise that she goes missing, her body later found by some rocks on the island of Kalymnos and, tragically, the body of little Primrose is found strangled in the ship’s swimming pool. Strangeways, using his status as an adjunct to Scotland Yard, sets out to discover who is responsible for the crimes.
Stylistically, the book falls into two distinct halves. In the first part of the book Blake allows himself the time and space to develop his characters and to explore the tensions that are surfacing aboard the ship. It is beautifully and elegantly written, the author embracing the opportunity to showcase his knowledge of Greek mythology and, as befits a future poet laureate, his encyclopaedic grasp of the poetic canon. The Greek islands he describes are radically different from the austere, brooding, threatening places in Gladys Mitchell’s Come Away, Death (1937).There are some moments of pure comedy, not least the donkey ride.
The second half is radically different, a police procedural with Strangeways conducting interviews with the various characters, trying to piece together what happened on that fatal day and testing the alibis of the prime suspects. In the final chapter, Poirot-like, he calls his suspects together and proceeds to air several theories as to what happened in an attempt to increase the pressure on the culprit so that they ultimately crack and end their life in dramatic fashion. There is little doubt that this is meant to be a parody of the famous Belgian’s methods.
It gives the book something of an ill-fitting feel about it. The mystery is well clued, in fact you could argue that the solution is telegraphed well in advance of the denouement, even if the ending has the power to shock and astound. Far from Blake’s best, it is still an enjoyable and satisfying read with enough twists and turns to maintain the reader’s interest. The relationship between Strangeways and Massinger is blossoming. Never underestimate the power of an artist’s eye.
