DEAD CALM - Charles Williams

Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub...

John and Rae Ingram are on their honeymoon, cruising casually on their yacht through the Indian Ocean when they encounter a young man, Hughie Warriner, along in a small boat.  Hughie claims to have come from another boat where the other three passengers succumbed to food poisoning, and with them incapacitated, the ship sank with them aboard, with Hughie only barely managing to escape in the dinghy.

John, a former Naval officer, senses too many inconsistencies in Hughie's story and heads off in the direction that the young man had come from.  He finds the listing boat and when Hughie is asleep below deck, John takes a small boat over to investigate.  What he finds is an unhappy Russ Bellows and Mrs. Warriner, begging for help. Hughie, it seems, caused the death of Bellows' wife and has gone off the deep end (pun acknowledged).

While John was investigating, Hughie takes the Ingram yacht, with Rae still aboard, and leaves John with the abandoned boat. John will pursue the kidnapper and his new wife in any way he can.

I was not familiar with author Charles Williams prior to this, and I see now that this is a follow-up to another book with John and Rae Ingram - though this definitely stands alone.

I thought it was really interesting to set the entire novel aboard a small boat on an ocean.  It really contributed to a strong sense of claustrophobia which greatly added to the psychological unease.

There wasn't really any 'terror' here, but when you are stuck in cramped quarters with someone you find suspicious, perhaps even a murderer, the constant emotional strain really wears a person down. Williams really captures this sense well, but manages to change it up when Hughie takes off with the boat and Rae.  We then get the chase and a new sense of danger for Rae as she's now alone on the boat, nowhere to escape, with the man who's left her husband for dead.

I quite enjoyed the book. I liked the challenge of containing the action to such small spaces, really forcing this to be a story of people and their actions.  But though I liked it, I can't honestly say that it's made me want to seek out more of Williams' writing.

Looking for a good book? Dead Calm by Charles Williams is a hard-boiled fiction story, well contained with a limited cast of characters that will keep you wondering who's trustworthy, who isn't, and what's going to happen next.

I received a digital copy of this book in the collection Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964, from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3-1/2 stars

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Dead Calm 

author: Charles Williams

series: John Ingram #2

publisher: Viking

ISBN: 9780670260423

hardcover, 188 pages