Deep Waters: Murder on the Waves
Edited by Martin Edwards. Poisoned Pen, $14.99 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-4642-1177-5
This enjoyable reprint anthology showcases 16 crime stories “connected, in one way or another, with water,” as Edwards (
Crimson Snow) notes in his introduction. Among the highlights are William Hope Hodgson’s “Bullion!,” in which boxes of gold bullion appear and disappear aboard a ship, and Gwyn Evans’s “The Pool of Secrets,” a clever variation on
The Hound of the Baskervilles, in which a murder is purportedly the work of the ghost of a woman who drowned herself in her silver wedding gown. Fans of the
Columbo TV series will appreciate R. Austin Freeman’s “The Echo of a Mutiny,” in which the author’s Holmesian detective, Dr. John Thorndyke, is able to apprehend a killer by examining the clues he left at the murder scene, a lighthouse. Drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, Edwards includes writers who will be new to most readers, notably James Pattinson, whose tricky “The Man Who Was Drowned” centers on a suspicious account of a man falling overboard from an ocean liner. This volume is a welcome addition to the British Library Crime Classics series.
(Sept.)