Corpse at Captain's Seat (Secrets and Scrabble 8), by Josh Lanyon

[Ulysses]

Corpse at Captain’s Seat (Secrets and Scrabble 8)
By Josh Lanyon
Published by JustJoshin Books, 2024
200 pages
Four stars

Ellery Page, former teen star and bookstore owner, is back, along with his serious, handsome, and totally trustworthy fiancé Jack—police chief on Buck Island.

It’s a little hard to fathom that, in this eighth book in the series, Ellery has only been in Pirate’s Cove for less than a year. He’s managed to fall in love with both Jack and Buck island, RI, in that time, while simultaneously involving himself in seven murders.

With renovations at the crumbling family manse approaching critical mass, Ellery decides to have a housewarming party at Captain’s Seat and invites a bunch of his old drama school classmates to join him. What is intended to be a nostalgic trip down memory lane turns into a unnerving voyage into the past, and a snowbound murder mystery.

In spite of the grisly killing, Lanyon’s latest is surprisingly low key for what I expected to be a high-anxiety thriller. Of course, this is an Ellery who has attained a certain maturity in his hectic year on Buck Island; and his relationship with Jack has given both of them an emotional balance beyond anything his former classmates have found. Each man understands the strengths and foibles of the other. Jack and Ellery are the strongest things in the narrative.

For me, the supporting characters did little to build the tension that should have filled the book. I never really got a good sense of the personalities of Ellery’s school friends, other than a general sense of their history and the tensions among them.

Additionally, the presence of Captain’s Seat itself should have been far stronger, given that most of the action takes place there. This is a nerdy quibble on my part, as an architectural historian; because the architecture of the house never quite fits with its supposed history. Ellery is a smart guy, and there would have been plenty of people on the island who were experts in local architecture, especially with the Gilded Age mansions of Newport so nearby. The house is never much more than a generalized description with some highlighted details (like the mermaid figurehead in the library). In truth, the house is the physical anchor for the entire series. It is the symbol of why Ellery came to Buck Island, and why he has finally decided to stay. More research into what a house like this might have really looked like would have been a big help.

I want to see more of Jack and Ellery. Both were strangers once, and they both have become part of the island community. I think they still have a lot to say.