LOOSE LIPS

Murder strikes—and strikes and strikes—the Get Lit Cruise, which has attracted 275 aspiring female authors, including one killer.

Belle Currer—not her real name, but the Charlotte Brontë–inspired byline she’s used for ghostwriting credits and her one published mystery novel—has always played second fiddle to Payton Garrett, the MFA classmate who struck it rich as a writer and podcaster. Now that Payton’s organized Get Lit, Belle’s happy to be aboard the Merman Rivera, but not so happy that she fails to notice that her mystery-writing class is much smaller than the poetry class taught by Payton’s wife, Nicole Root, or the romance class taught by Jessamine LaBouchère (not her real name either), or of course the class taught by Payton herself. Intrigue is promised from the get-go by the presence of Flora Fortescue, another MFA classmate who’s suing Payton for plagiarizing her unpublished biography of Lord Byron’s half-sister, Augusta Leigh, for her novel, and by Belle’s announcement early on that, in addition to dinners prepared by Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gasçoigne—one of three men aboard—the cruise will include three homicides before it ends. As she works to bond in one way with ship’s doctor Joan Chen and in another way entirely with journalist Gideon Pereira, Payton’s ex, Belle’s chatty, self-deprecating first-person narrative keeps everything afloat before, during, and after those murders. If the windup feels a tad overextended, you may just be reacting to the claustrophobia stemming from those tiny cabins that keep you cooped up with suspects who dish entertainingly about the problems of writing, especially if you’re a woman.

Spoiler: 28 passengers end up suing the cruise organizer. It’s highly unlikely, though, that any readers will join them.