S.S. Murder

by Q. Patrick, Curtis Evans (Introduction)

Overview

It’s homicide on the high seas in this “A 1 mystery” by the Edgar Award–winning author Q. Patrick (Kirkus Reviews).

Cub reporter Mary Llewellyn is on a soothing sea cruise to help her recover after a minor operation. Her fellow passengers are pleasant enough, gathering to play a friendly game of bridge to pass the time. But the game turns considerably less so when a wealthy businessman samples a cocktail—and ends up dead at the table.

The news that someone onboard dumped a fatal dose of strychnine into the man’s drink sends a ripple of panic through the voyagers. All too soon, it becomes clear that the murder was not an isolated incident when another passenger is shoved overboard during a storm.

Determined to stop a murderer, Mary decides to do some snooping above and below deck to get to the truth. If she doesn’t figure out the mystery of the seagoing slayer, she might not make it back to land alive.

A traditional mystery set aboard a luxury cruise liner from the Golden Age of nautical travel, S.S. Murder is a charming whodunit written under a shared pseudonym used by Sweeney Todd author Hugh Wheeler and his lover Ricky Webb.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613165362
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	236
Sales rank:	523,376
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Q. Patrick was one of the pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), Martha Mott Kelley (1906–2005), and Mary Louise White Aswell (1902–1984) wrote detective fiction. Most of the stories were written together by Webb and Wheeler, or by Wheeler alone. Their best-known creation is amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

Curtis Evans is the author of several studies of classic crime fiction, including Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery, The Spectrum of English Murder, and Clues and Corpses: The Detective Fiction and Mystery Criticism of Todd Downing. He edited the Edgar-nominated Murder in the Closet: Queer Clues in Crime Fiction Before Stonewall and blogs at The Passing Tramp.

Editorial Reviews

"A more cleverly constructed murder yarn than this one would be difficult to find anywhere."

New York Times

2024-02-17
Murder strikes a cruise ship bound from New York to Rio de Janeiro in this reprint from 1933.

Journalist Mary Llewellyn, recovering from an appendectomy, expects the only flaw of her 10 days aboard the S.S. Moderna to be the absence of her colleague and fiance, David Donnelly, to whom she addresses a series of letters that end up telling a much more eventful story. The first night out, which happens to be Friday the 13th, successful businessman Alfred Lambert gets a fatal dose of strychnine, presumably administered by one of the three other people at his bridge table or the three other passengers in the room. The most likely suspect is Robinson, not only because his bridge is utterly incompetent and he doesn’t have a first name, but because he promptly disappears, and there’s no record of anyone named Robinson among the ship’s cast or crew. Mary, an incurable reporter, asks enough questions to raise the hackles of Lambert’s sister-in-law, the widowed Mrs. Clapp, once famous as comedienne Marcia Manners, but not enough questions to prevent a second murder. There follow all the obligatory alarums and excursions you’d expect aboard a Golden Age cruise, creakily but deftly managed by the pseudonymous Patrick, whose actual identity as Richard Wilson Webb and Mary Louise White Aswell in one of four distinct permutations of authors behind the pen name is the biggest reveal of Curtis Evans’ introduction. The solution is surprising, though Mary’s letters never remotely approach Patrick’s promise of “emotion, not recollected in cold tranquillity, but poured on to paper while it was still molten.”

Decorous retro entertainment that would make perfect shipboard reading.

Kirkus Reviews

"Deftly crafted and a fun read for dedicated mystery buffs from start to finish."

Midwest Book Review