#20booksofsummer23 is a reading challenge started by 746 Books where participants attempt to read 10, 15, or 20 books off of their TBR and review them between June 1 – September 1, 2023. I am trying to read and review 6-7 books that I picked per month. You can see my complete reading list here.
Plot Summary
In a comedy of errors, author Dunstan Mollock accidentally stays aboard the Latakia after trying to give his sister and brother-in-law a farewell gift before they sail from New York to Cherbourg, France. After being given the option to take a small boat back to land, Dunstan Mollock decides to stay aboard, write a new book, and pal around with his friend, Walter Ghost, an ex-military intelligence officer.
Dunstan Mollock is fascinated by his fellow passengers, which include an Italian Baroness, a beautiful young woman named Dhu Harrington, her elderly aunt, and a well-liked military officer. To beguile the lovely Dhu Harrington, Dunstan Mollock reads her the beginning of his new novel, which opens with the strangling of a mysterious Italian Baroness, but when the Italian Baroness on board is actually found strangled in her cabin, and her friend, the military officer mysteriously falls overboard, Dunstan Mollock and Walter Ghost team up to solve these two baffling murders.
The initial premise of two amateur detectives trying to solve two cases with a closed circle of suspects on a time crunch sounds exciting. However, the execution is middling at best. First, Walter Ghost, who is tapped as the Captain as the lead investigator, is not naturally talented in his new role. He doesn’t question witnesses or try to create a timeline, and any attempts to lean on Dunstan Mollock quickly evaporate because Dunstan is busy mooning about Dhu Harrington. Dunstan Mollock might also be the worst sidekick ever imagined by humankind. He. Never. Stops. Talking. I found him so irritating that it took me forever to finish reading this book. At one point, Walter Ghost decides to cut his losses and ice out Mollock to investigate the strange clues left in the Baroness’s cabin in peace.
The clueing in The Murder on “B” Deck is mysterious and fun. Two hand-knitted dolls are found in the Baroness’s cabin. The dolls were often keepsakes kept by lovers when one went to fight in WWI. This leads Walter Ghost to suspect that someone onboard is a spurned lover of the Baroness. While searching her belongings, Walter Ghost also finds an old homemade movie starring the Baroness as a damsel in distress, held captive by a man with a long beard and fake teeth. She is rescued from being strangled in the movie by two clean-cut brothers whose motorcycles break down near the house. Dunstan Mollock is sure he recognizes the film’s villain but cannot place him. Walter Ghost hopes that by showing the movie to the passengers on the ship, someone will give themselves away as the villain, but his plan fails.
I liked the introduction of the movie element, and I thought the description of the movie was a great parody of the film being made during this period. Coupled with the period-accurate dolls and ship routes, some period realism is present in Murder on “B” Deck that appealed to me.
However, Vincent Starrett’s Murder on “B” Deck is not a fair play mystery; you will never be able to figure out who the culprit is, and the motivation is never fleshed out, only monologued by the killer at the end. It’s an unsatisfying ending, especially since Starrett can have ingenious physical clues.
The lack of investigative prowess, especially any real physiological insight or procedural discipline, makes it difficult for any other types of clues discovered by Mollock and Ghost. Starrett envisioned Mollock and Ghost as modern for the time, reimagining Sherlock Holmes and Watson- with a nice twist with the military man as the lead and an author as a sidekick. It’s like splitting the two facets of Watson into separate people. But the Mollock and Ghost duo never really get off the ground; they don’t have disparate but complimentary knowledge and Mollock is so self-absorbed that he’s never truly invested in solving the murder. Ghost, realizing that he’s better muddling through on his own, spends most of the second half of the book lamenting how little time he has left to solve the case, and the reader is treated to long extemporaneous passages where he attempts to come up with plans on trapping the murderer.
Not quite a dynamic duo.
The ending drops in Ghost’s lap by an uncharitably dumb blunder on the killer’s behalf, and then mercifully, the first Walter Ghost mystery comes to a close.
I will read the next book in the series Dead Man Inside because I am curious to see if there’s much investigative growth, but I’m not clamoring for the next adventure.
Murder on “B” Deck Reviews
#20booksofsummer23 Reviews
Golden Age of Detective Fiction 
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