There is nothing wrong with a familiar premise.
Crime fiction has been putting a group of people somewhere they cannot easily escape, adding a body, and asking us to work out whodunnit for a very long time.
The problem is that once you choose that formula, the pressure needs to build.
Jack Heath’s Choppy Water puts its characters aboard a cruise ship in March 2020, as borders are closing and the world is beginning to understand what COVID might mean. Cesar Cain is trying to disappear, but being trapped at sea with a killer rather complicates that plan.
A death occurs. Then it becomes apparent it may not be the first. The passengers are confined, suspicion starts moving around the ship, and all the pieces are there for the tension to keep tightening.
For me, it never quite does. Perhaps that is partly because the closed-circle murder has been done so many times that the bar is now higher. A cruise ship is a good setting, but confinement alone isn't enough. These stories work when each revelation makes the situation feel a little more dangerous, and the reader starts turning pages faster because the characters really have nowhere to go.
Choppy Water certainly has moments of that, and the story's timing adds another layer of uncertainty. But I kept waiting for it to properly accelerate.
That does not make it a bad read. Heath has taken a well-used crime structure and added enough to make it his own, and readers will undoubtedly enjoy working through the suspects and following the clues as the mystery unfolds.
I just wanted more urgency. When people are trapped on a boat, and somebody is killing them, the reader should probably feel slightly trapped too. Instead, I remained at a comfortable distance from the action rather than being pulled into it.
Readable, certainly. Clever in places. But for a thriller called Choppy Water, I expected rather more turbulence.
Our rating - 3/5
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