Author Ware dearly loves her Hitchcock, borrowing the basic premise from "The Lady Vanishes".......(heroine meeting someone who promptly becomes non-existent.....to the disbelief of everyone around her......)
When it comes time to pull the Big Fat Twist, Ware freely borrows it from another, even more iconic Hitchcock film.......(we'll stay mum on this, for those of you who haven't read the book, but might want to....)
The mystery here intrigued us enough to overlook the book's many glaring flaws.....(the lead character's a dreary hot mess, the cast of suspects is a bland, interchangeable collection of cardboard Agatha Christie cast-offs)
Movie deal? Don't hold your breath. Producers won't like that only the first half of the book offers some visual flair, taking place on a British tycoon's medium-sized cruise ship......(something halfway between a private yacht and those gargantuan behemoths that chug around the Caribbean until everyone contracts dysentery or somebody falls overboard).
The book's second half turns painfully slow and claustrophobic.........and curiously keeps the story's ultimate evil villain at arm's length. That may have worked for Hitchcock from time to time, but Ware is no literary equivalent to Hitchcock and she ends up robbing her book of what could have been a smashing, satisfying finish.
So it's doubtful that young actresses will want to race to ugly themselves up to play this story's boozing, drug dependent protagonist.....
We'd still recommend you wait for film, if it ever gets made.......but only if they toss out the second half of the book......1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)....about as entertaining as a dead-of-winter trip on the Staten Island Ferry.......
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