Author: Maya Corrigan
Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781496709196
Kensington Publishing
267 Pages
$7.99; $5.99 Amazon
July 31, 2018
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Since catering themed events is a good way to make extra cash, Val agrees to board the Titanic - or at least cater a re-creation of the doomed journey on a yacht. The owner of the yacht, who collects memorabilia related to the disaster, wants al to serve the last meal the Titanic passengers ate...while his guests play a murder-mystery game. But it is the final feast for one passenger who disappears from the ship. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Now Val has to reel in a killer before s'more murders go down...
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Val Dennison is manager of a café at a tennis club, and in her off-time she caters meals and helps her grandfather test recipes for his Codger Cooks column in the local newspaper. Since they need repairs done on his old Victorian home, Val agrees -- against her grandfather's advice -- to re-create as close as possible the original meal served to the first-class passengers on the fatal night that sunk the Titanic.
When she's approached by Otto Warbeck, she's taken aback by the request, and the fact that it has to be done in little time. But she's agreed to it because she needs the money, and he's offered her a good amount of it. She's also being helped in the kitchen by her grandfather and Bethany, her assistant at the café. The dinner will be held on Otto's yacht, which will be sailing, so that's one more thing Val needs to worry about.
When a guest doesn't show up, Bethany is coerced into acting a role in the game that Otto has planned for his guests, supposedly about a passenger who disappeared the night before the ship hit the iceberg. But during courses, someone goes missing they run into a squall, so when they check on the pilot, it's discovered he's asleep, and it's up to her grandfather to get the boat back to shore while they call the Coast Guard.
But all is not well -- with the passenger missing, Val finds out that Jerome Young, the young pilot, might be charged with a crime, she finds out his aunt is an attorney that she knows from the club. She's also asked to try and find out what happened by someone on the boat. To make matters more troublesome, she's having problems in her relationship with her boyfriend Gunnar, who doesn't seem to care about anything but his new 'career' as an actor. Val certainly has her hands full, and if she doesn't watch it, she might be the next person to go permanently missing...
This is the fifth book in the series and I've read every one of them. While I like how things have progressed (I didn't care for her grandfather at all in the beginning, but he's changing and not taking advantage of Val any more), I still don't care for Gunnar. On his list of things that matter to him, Val is probably at the bottom. Enough said about that.
The plot is a very good one -- it appears on the surface to be a mini-play about what might have happened to a missing person on the Titanic but soon becomes something different. And it is this nuance that makes all the difference. You don't notice it happening, but a clue is given almost immediately, and it causes everything to move in the direction it is supposed to. When Val starts looking into the murder, she learns things about the various guests that make her wonder if the missing man didn't plan things this way all along. And when she starts to put it all together, along with the help of her grandfather, it soon begins to make sense.
But it isn't until the last third of the book that you start to see what is going on all along, and it's this that makes you continue reading. When the murderer is discovered, it's not so much a shock, but more that you already know and expected it; yet Val finds a clue that we never even thought to look for, and that makes the book worth reading. I can't wait to dig into the next in the series. Recommended.
More on Maya Corrigan's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/maya-corrigan/
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