cover image Unsinkable

Unsinkable

Dan James. Arrow (IPG, dist.), $12.95 trade paper (396p) ISBN 978-0-09-955813-2

While many books have appeared about the Titanic tragedy since its 100th anniversary in 2012, this spellbinder from the pseudonymous James ranks among the best. In a brilliant interweaving of a bloody anarchist attack in London with an obsessive hunt for a brutal killer on the ill-fated ship, this absorbing narrative provides a stunning new twist on the cause of the disaster. Amid the chaos of the Sidney Street Siege between Latvian revolutionaries and police in seedy Houndsditch, gang leader Peter Piatkow escapes, leaving Scotland Yard detective Arthur Beck as the only survivor among four officers. Out of a job and haunted by memories, Beck books passage on the legendary White Star liner in the hope of starting life anew in America, but soon glimpses Piatkow on the ship in various disguises. Ambitious gossip columnist Martha Heaton is also aboard and looking for newsy tidbits on the first-class passengers. She befriends Beck and eventually assists him in his relentless search for this "terrorist" (a new term at the time). Such actual personages as "scandal plagued" Colonel Astor, grandfatherly Capt. Edward Smith, and White Star president Bruce Ismay, "incapable of seeing beyond pound and dollar signs," give a sense of realism as tension builds amid many "ice warnings" in the North Atlantic. (July)