Forgotten Book - Death in a Deck Chair

Death in a Deck Chair is a novel written by K.K. Beck and published in 1984. Kathrine Kristine Beck (also known as Marris, a surname of one of the characters in the story), who also wrote as Marie Oliver, was a prolific American crime writer for the fifteen years up to 1999. She was married to the talented British crime novelist Michael Dibdin, who sadly died in 2007, but why she gave up writing herself when she was still under the age of 50, I don't know. She originated from Seattle and evidently worked in advertising, as so many detective novelists have done.

This novel is very much in the American "cosy" tradition. It's set in the summer of 1927, and introduces an attractive 19 year old girl, Iris Cooper, who proceeded to appear in two further novels before Beck moved on to produce other stories. And it's another cruise ship story, as Iris and her aunt Hermione take a trip on board the luxury liner HMS Irenia, sailing from Southampton back home to Portland, Oregon.

Iris befriends a shy young man called Twist, who is secretary to Professor Probrislow, a specialist in criminal lunacy. She is, however, warned against Twist by the ship's pianist. The other passengers include a Count, a Cardinal, a German governess, a newspaperman, a judge, and the rather enigmatic Mrs Destinoy-Pinchot.

Before long, someone is murdered, and a rather inept investigation is conducted on board, with Iris brought in to perform secretarial services. Needless to say, she decides to try her hand at amateur sleuthing. I'm afraid my attention was beginning to wander even before a Ruritanian-style European kingdom was introduced into the storyline. My worst fears were confirmed when affairs in Graznia proved to play an important part in the plot. It's quite competently done, but it was all too tame for me, I'm sorry to say. Death in a Deck Chair makes the typical Agatha Christie look like something by Jim Thompson.

 

Not Wanted on Voyage

One of the lecture topics I chose for my recent talks on board Queen Mary 2 was "cruise mysteries". And the more I researched the subject, the more examples I found of such novels. Quite a few of them will feature as Forgotten Books over the coming months. There are plenty of enjoyable titles from the past where writers have made excellent use of cruise ships as a background for murder mysteries. The "closed community" on board ship makes for an atmospheric setting.

Then again, and perhaps inevitably, I did encounter a few disappointments. On this blog, I like to focus on books I've enjoyed, rather than the misfires, but if anyone thinks I am besotted with all classic mysteries, regardless, perhaps this post will alter that view! There were four books which didn't really do it for me, alas. Each of them had some redeeming features, but not enough for me to want to devote a whole "Forgotten Book" post to them. So here's a round-up - and of course, feel free to disagree...

One of the disappointments was The Blind Barber by John Dickson Carr. It's a Gideon Fell mystery, first published in 1934, and featuring an Atlantic crossing from New York to Southampton. I was really looking forward to reading this one, which had previously eluded me. But I have to say that, despite my enthusiasm for both Carr and Fell, this book disappointed me. It's really an armchair detective story, with Fell told about misadventures on board ship by his friend, the mystery writer Henry Morgan. The story is, really, a farce, and the humour hasn't worn particularly well.

I was also optimistic about Robin Forsythe's The Pleasure Cruise Mystery. Once very obscure, it's an example of Dean Street Press's admirable commitment to reprinting forgotten mysteries. The story features Algernon Vereker, and it's quite well and amusingly written, especially in the early stages. But the plot simply didn't capture my interest. I shall definitely give Forstyhe another go, but this was a rather discouraging introduction to his work.

K.K. Beck was a prolific writer of cozy-type mysteries in the later years of the twentieth century. I read her Death in a Deck Chair, set in the Golden Age, and it's a competent piece of  light (very light) entertainment, but the involvement in the storyline of one of those Ruritanian-style countries so beloved of minor GA writers put me off.

Finally, Nancy Spain's Not Wanted on Voyage. There's a nice plan of the cruise ship at the start of my copy, but the story didn't appeal to me. In real life, Nancy was a fascinating character, as her biography and autobiography make clear, but her speciality as a detective novelist was humour, and I found the facetiousness of this one simply too much. I'm afraid the title is all too accurate; I still haven't finished it..