The Midnight Watch / David Dyer - 2.5**

[Book Concierge]

The Midnight Watch – David Dyer
2.5**

Subtitle: A Novel of the Titanic and the Californian

When the Titanic struck the ice berg in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, she was not the only ship in those waters. Crew and passengers noticed the lights of a ship on the horizon, and attempts were made to signal that ship for assistance. That ship was the Californian … and she arrived too late. This novel attempts to explain why.

Dyer chose to write the book from two perspectives: Californian’s Second Officer Herbert Stone, who was the officer in charge of the midnight watch and saw the rockets being fired; and John Steadman, a news reporter, noticing inconsistencies in the official statements given by Californian’s Captain Stanley Lord, believes that the truth is being hidden and takes extra efforts to unearth the story.

This is Dyer’s first novel, and he definitely chose a topic with which he was familiar. According to his bio, he spent many years as a lawyer at a London legal practice whose parent firm represented the Titanic’s owners in 1912. He had also worked as a cadet and ship’s officer and graduated from the Australian Maritime College. So he had his own experience as a seaman, and access to documents and artifacts regarding the disaster to help inspire this book.

Like many people, I am fascinated by the Titanic’s story. I was eager to read this novel and thought it would shed some light on the decisions made aboard the Californian that resulted in no action taken to assist the sinking liner. But Dyer’s narrative style failed to capture my attention. The moving back and forth in time and from one narrator to another broke up the story arc in a way that just didn’t work for me. I would get interested in one point of view only to yanked back (or forth) to another timeframe and another story line. Just as John Steadman struggles to find the hook that will give him the great story his editor demands, I struggled to find the hook that would bind me to this novel.

Finally, towards the end of the book (page 253 out of 319 pages), Dyer gives the reader his character’s report of the events of that fateful night: “Eight White Rockets” by John Steadman. THIS is what I was hoping for when I heard about the novel. Those last 60 pages of the novel were gripping.


LINK to my review