Blue Water: the Instant Times Bestseller (Laurence Jago)

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With President Eisenhower due to pay his first state visit, Rose, who had a hand in the assassination of “the Leader” a couple of years earlier and is surprised to be still at liberty, is tasked with meeting Queen Wallis for a background briefing. There is quite an eclectic group of people on board, and that is before a girl eith a dancing bear boards at one of the stops. My Lord, affairs aboard this ship have gone worse than I could ever have imagined when I accepted your commission. She lives in Cornwall, in a seventeenth-century house with seventeenth-century draughts, and spins the fleeces of her Ryeland sheep into yarn.

Jago is assisting a civil servant to safely carry an important Treaty to Congress that will prevent the Americans from joining with the French to wage war against Britain. The year is 1795 and disgraced former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago is aboard the Tankerville mail ship, en route to Philadelphia. This is a wonderfully written story, full of superstition and seances, intrigue and secrets, with a little romance and even a dancing bear! Rose Ransom, who has the highest status permitted to women under the caste system designed by (real) Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, is busy rewriting works of literature to ensure they are in accordance with the ideals of the regime. It is his great chance to redeem himself—except that his predecessor has taken the secret of the treaty's hiding place to his watery grave.SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD **** AN INSTANT TIMES BESTSELLER ** ** A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR **'A TRULY GRIPPING READ' - GUARDIAN'FABULOUS, A DELIGHT' - S. And I have to say that I loved this about the crew, together with recognising some familiar-sounding names in their midst and wondering if Leonora Nattrass took her inspiration from fictional or real-life namesakes.

With the story being set on board a three masted packet ship, in a ‘locked room’ murder mystery style, this story has a lot to offer the historical reader who won’t be disappointed.

However, the name of another student, David Moore, who either fell or was pushed in front of a train in 1998, keeps cropping up – and when Rice’s apparent drug overdose turns out to be murder, DI Kaur suspects there may be a link between the two deaths.

Whilst I really enjoyed 'Black Drop' I feel that this novel shows Nattrass really hitting her stride.

Blue Water is a compelling locked room murder-mystery filled with an exquisitely drawn cast of eccentric characters. Crazy events happen, death and sea monsters, and are simply brushed over with hardly a ripple of excitement.