There is nothing wrong with a familiar premise. Crime fiction has been putting a group of people somewhere they cannot easily escape, adding a body, and asking us to work out whodunnit for a very long time.
The problem is that once you choose that formula, the pressure needs to build.
Jack Heath’s Choppy Water puts its characters aboard a cruise ship in March 2020, as borders are closing and the world is beginning to understand what COVID might mean. Cesar Cain is trying to disappear, but being trapped at sea with a killer rather complicates that plan.
A death occurs. Then it becomes apparent it may not be the first. The passengers are confined, suspicion starts moving around the ship, and all the pieces are there for the tension to keep tightening.
For me, it never quite does. Perhaps that is partly because the closed-circle murder has been done so many times that the bar is now higher. A cruise ship is a good setting, but confinement alone isn’t enough. These stories work when each revelation makes the situation feel a little more dangerous, and the reader starts turning pages faster because the characters really have nowhere to go.
Choppy Water certainly has moments of that, and...