The Widow's Cruise

I quite enjoyed The Widow's Cruise (1959), the eleventh Nigel Strangeways mystery by Nicholas Blake (a pseudonym for Cecil Day-Lewis, poet laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972). Highly reminiscent of an Agatha Christie story, The Widow's Cruise is a delightful exercise in deduction. Several solutions are quite plausible. The actual solution is a surprise, an entirely fair one as all the clues are indeed visible, at least in retrospect. The poet Nigel Strangeways and his friend, the well-respected sculptress Claire Massinger, are relaxing on a Greek cruise ship. As so often is the case, Strangeways becomes entangled in affairs that lead to murder. Seemingly every passenger has some secret, and much of the fun is sorting out which secrets are red herrings and which are indeed relevant to the mystery itself. The Widow's Cruise was reissued in 1977 in a Perennial Library paperback by Harper and Row Publishers. It can also be found in The Nicholas Blake Treasury, Volume 4, a hardcover book club edition published by the Mystery Guild.