Loose Lips
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
Knives Out meets high seas intrigue on a literary cruise to nowhere in this intelligent, wildly funny locked room mystery for fans of Richard Osman, Anthony Horowitz, Nita Prose, and Agatha Christie!
The USA Today bestselling host of the "All About Agatha" podcast injects the spark and fizz of a Golden Age murder mystery into the present-day, as the ghostwriter’s skills are put to the test aboard a bestselling author’s decidedly insalubrious cruise.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. So goes the adage, but sometimes, even a first-rate ghostwriter and successful mystery author needs to make a buck. Even if that means setting foot on a cruise ship, something she vowed she’d never do. To top it off, the “Get Lit Cruise” is being organized by Payton Garrett, a very popular, bestselling author—and the ghostwriter’s long-time frenemy from back in their MFA days.
Over the years, Payton has reinvented herself. She gained a wife while ditching her journalist husband—who is also on board. And she’s acquired a rabid following who eagerly snapped up the invitations sent to a select few of her newsletter subscribers. The guests, all female, will receive personalized instruction from experts in five different writing genres, while basking in Payton’s reflected glow.
Between mentoring guests, flirting with Payton’s ex, and taking bets on how long before someone performs a reenactment of Titanic’s “I’m flying!” scene (answer: not long enough), there’s plenty to keep a ghostwriter occupied. But there’s one activity nobody expected: solving a murder.
When an attendee is found dead under suspicious circumstances and several others suffer symptoms of poisoning, there are numerous motives and suspects to choose from. But could it be that the victim wasn’t even the intended target? As the body count rises along with onboard tensions, no one is safe—except, perhaps, for a killer whose scruples have long abandoned ship. And of course, like every well-plotted mystery, this one has an extra twist . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Donovan's second whodunit featuring a ghostwriter turned sleuth (after The Busy Body) is a mixed bag. Crime novelist Belle Currer, who ghostwrites celebrity memoirs on the side, finds herself dealing with a real-life closed-circle murder mystery when she accepts an invitation to teach a writing class aboard a luxury cruise. Superstar author Payton Garrett, who first met Belle when they attended the same MFA program, has organized the Get Lit Cruise for wealthy "fans of literature" to attend lectures during a one-week trip across the Atlantic. Flora Fortescue, another MFA classmate, who believes Payton stole her idea for a novel about Lord Byron's half sister, is among the passengers. As Belle promises in the prologue, three murders occur over the course of the trip, allowing her to flex her knowledge of detective fiction as she solves them one by one. Donovan's attempts at humor frequently fall flat (Belle prefers white wine because it "sums me up so well: I'm white, and I have a tendency to whine"), and his heavy-handed foreshadowing drains the narrative of tension. While the plot delivers occasional jolts of fun, readers intrigued by the premise would be better off with Benjamin Stevenson's Ernest Cunningham series.
