Cruises of all kinds are a classical setting for crimes and it takes a lot of creativity to brings something new to this genre. Poirot´s Death on the Nile is hard to replicate, but there are more detectives than Poirot and even more interesting rivers than the Nile. Death on the Rhine, a novella featuring DCI Greg Geldard, by multi-award winning crime ficiton author Heather Peck is an example in this respect.
Writing a novella is in itself a challenge, because you have a limited amount of literary time in order to create characters, develop stories and, when it comes to crime stories, to kill the characters and as fast as possible find the culprit(s).
Despite those limitations, Death on the Rhine suceeds to tick successfully a lot of crime boxes, creating a story with unexpected twists, while featuring complex characters and human encounters.
When Ben and Paula embarked on a luxury cruise on the Rhine, they were expecting to enjoy their second honeymoon. But gods laughed and their plans failed. A crime was committed and instead of admiring the castles across the Rhine and eventually have some Moselle wine, they are entangled in a web of deceit, adult bullying and unexpected human characters.
Death on the Rhine is a cosy classical mystery, with very modern and ingenious twists. I enjoyed reading the novella both in terms of the plot and of the format. I wish I can find more short writings of this genre, as they are both entertaining and mind challenging, as running out of time to solve the crime riddle.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the blog tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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