GIVEAWAY: 3 copies of The Moonlit Piazza – UMBRIA, Italy
Thriller set on a transatlantic crossing – ATLANTIC
24th January 2024
Five Nights by Rachel Wolf, thriller set on a transatlantic Atlantic crossing.
Meet the Scamardo family: think Succession Italian style, via Newcastle upon Tyne. Mattia is the ageing head of the family, now married to Belle, a younger woman more than half his age. He keeps a tight reign on business affairs, at least he has done so until this point. He has worked and amassed an incredible level of wealth, but now his new venture is luxury liners, and his off-spring are concerned that Belle has turned his head and encouraged this risky undertaking – investors are wobbling and much rides on the success of the inaugural sailing. It seems a bonkers change from washing machines, his core business and we don’t really learn much about this transition from white goods to shipping. His children, it seems, are out to bring his new wife down, in order to preserve their inheritance.
Emily and Belle are childhood friends and have considerable history, outlined early on in the novel. They grew up together and used to work side by side on luxury yachts, but on one contract Belle was taken hostage for three days during a raid. Emily was there and witnessed what happened, and their individual experiences and responses proved traumatic in very different ways. It was at a charity event for hostages held sometime later that Mattia met Belle and the attraction was seemingly instantaneous.
Since the abduction, the two young women have not been in contact. And then, out of the blue, an invitation arrives for Emily to join Belle and her new family (including Mattia’s grown up children) on board the new luxury liner, along with a myriad other paying passengers, who are along for the inaugural crossing to New York. The ship has everything, including a swing that billows out over the ocean, a 24 hour ice cream shop, dining areas galore, spa (of course) and luxury cabins for passengers to take stock of the unfolding events….
We are privy to the ins and outs of Mattia’s first marriage with Viola, who died in suspicious circumstances but who sired his motley offspring, using tried and tested measures to get herself pregnant. Her story serves to offer background information on the children and on her marriage before she died. Her story is told in random chapters, slotted into the main storyline.
Yes, people die on board and Emily proves to be a heroic, gung-ho sleuth (she has worked-out obsessively since the abduction and has honed her self- defence skills to keep herself safe, which all prove very useful on board this particular boat). Long-held secrets and grudges start to surface as the nautical miles pass.
This is a competently plotted novel but for me there is too much pondering in Emily’s mind, with rhetorical questions posed to move things along. It’s a technique of storytelling that doesn’t appeal to me. As the plot evolves, the action becomes frantic as the ship inevitably heads through a storm towards the Big Apple, with people being pushed overboard, and yet found and rescued in roiling waves in the dark 🙄. For me it proved to be just on the wrong side of a credible story – it does, of course, have good pace and an interesting storyline, with all the tension of a locked-room narrative – and this will appeal to many readers.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
Join team TripFiction on Social Media:
Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction) and BlueSky(tripfiction.bsky.social) and Threads (TripFiction)
Please wait...
