Title: Distress Signals
Author: Catherine Ryan Howard
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Read: January 2017
Expected publication: 2 February 2017
Synopsis (Goodreads):
The day Adam Dunne's girlfriend, Sarah, fails to return from
a Barcelona business trip, his perfect life begins to fall apart. Days later,
the arrival of her passport and a note that reads "I'm sorry--S" sets
off real alarm bells. He vows to do whatever it takes to find her.
Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate--and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before.
To get answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a predator who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground ...
Adam is puzzled when he connects Sarah to a cruise ship called the Celebrate--and to a woman, Estelle, who disappeared from the same ship in eerily similar circumstances almost exactly a year before.
To get answers, Adam must confront some difficult truths about his relationship with Sarah. He must do things of which he never thought himself capable. And he must try to outwit a predator who seems to have found the perfect hunting ground ...
My thoughts:
Adam Dunne is a happy man - he has a gorgeous, hard-working
girlfriend, Sarah, who supports his ambition to be a writer, and has just managed
to get a film studio interested in a screenplay he has written. But his life is
about to change when Sarah fails to return from a supposed business trip to
Barcelona. Strangely, neither Sarah’s parents nor any of her work colleagues
are aware that Sarah has gone abroad, and she isn’t answering her phone. As
Adam starts a frantic search for Sarah’s whereabouts, he discovers that Sarah
has been keeping secrets from him for a while. Fearing that she may be in
danger, Adam embarks on retracing her last known steps, which take him aboard the
large cruise ship Celebrate, where a ruthless killer may be on the loose. Will
his quest to find Sarah put Adam himself in the killer’s path?
In a genre oversaturated with books aiming to stand out from
the rest with that “shocking surprise twist” (which is, in most cases, a rather
dubious marketing ploy), Catherine Ryan Howard has managed to find an original,
intriguing setting where different rules apply: a large cruise ship filled with
thousands of passengers from all over the world traversing international
waters. Brimming with fascinating facts about maritime law, Distress Signals
will take you into the dark and murky waters (literally) of the cruise ship
industry. To be honest, the thought of being trapped on a tin can in the middle
of the ocean with thousands of other people has never appealed to me, but after
reading this clever murder mystery, I will definitely strike the experience off
my bucket list. Not only do the confined quarters make a perfect hunting ground
for a depraved mind, but the intricacies of maritime law make it even easier
for perpetrators to escape the justice system – if they know how to use these
rules to their advantage. I was fascinated (if horrified) by the interesting
facts the author explains as Adam frantically searches for Sarah aboard the
Celebrate.
There are three separate elements running through the
storyline, with three different POVs: Adam, our main protagonist; Romain, a
young French boy with a trouble past; and Corinne, a crew member on the ship.
Initially these three narratives seemed quite separate and I thought Romain to
be quite an odd character. However, as the story nears the end, all three
threads are cleverly woven together to form the well-plotted finale to the
story. And don’t worry, if you thought you had worked it all out, as I did,
there is an extra surprise in store, which I certainly did not see coming.
Atmospheric, character driven and cleverly plotted, Distress
Signals had me hooked from the very start and captivated me until the final
reveal. I loved the setting, which added a claustrophobic feel to the story,
and threw Adam an extra curveball when his back was already up against the wall
and his world as he knew it had gone up in flames. Adam’s despair was tangible
on every page, adding that emotional connection that kept me reading much too
late into the night.
“I was a guy who couldn’t face a full and frank discussion about how best to pay for a shared taxi ride home. How in the hell was I supposed to confront a killer?”
A very clever mystery which stands out from the fray in more
ways than one – well worth picking up this summer for a great holiday read!
Thank you to
Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free electronic copy of
this novel in exchange for an honest review.
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