Dance on a Sinking Ship
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A dogged reporter follows Prince Edward and Charles Lindbergh onto a doomed ocean liner in this historical novel with "a full cargo of intrigue" (Kirkus Reviews).
C. Jamieson Spencer is sipping cognac when Paris starts to burn. As Communists and Fascists battle in the streets below his hotel balcony, this world-weary foreign correspondent does not bother taking notes. He's too busy falling in love with an enchantingly beautiful stranger. The reporter is just working up the courage to ask the woman her name when a stray bullet pierces her skull. In Paris, love comes quickly and life ends fast.
After Spencer files his story on the riots, his editor recalls him to the United States and assigns him to sail on the new luxury liner Wilhelmina, which carries some of the world's most scandalous figures: from Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson to the Nazi-sympathizing Charles Lindbergh. As the royals play bedroom games, Spencer digs up plenty of gossip—but the real story starts when the lifeboats hit the water.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although By Order of the President received favorable notices, Kilian's new book does little to live up to its glowing jacket copy. In this historical "what-if'' novel, Edward, Prince of Wales sets off on a pleasure cruise in 1935, blithely ignoring the political storms wracking Europe as the Nazi regime flexes its power. Traveling with him on an ill-fated luxury oceanliner are his sharp-tongued American mistress, Wallis Simpson, and a host of bored, dissolute English aristocrats, including Lord and Lady Mountbatten. Also on board is a lovelorn, yet supremely cynical journalist, C. Jamieson Spencer, who is hoping to write a story on fellow passenger Charles Lindbergh. He watches, then joins the royal hangers-on in their tedious rounds of gaiety and bed-hopping, while Wallis and Edward spoon and spat, and German and Russian agents circle the group. Their collective mettle is testedand found wantingwhen the ship nearly burns to the waterline, and the royal party briefly takes to the lifeboats. The excitement stirred up in these calamitous scenes soon dies away, however. While Kilian's painstaking research on the speech and behavior of his celebrated characters is not to be faulted, its application lacks spark from the first and only proves that truth and fiction can be equally dull.
