Creative Writing

Every great mystery series needs a great setting. Think of the Orient Express, sealed and snowbound. Imagine the English country house, its inhabitants stranded together by social obligation. Then there is the small village where everybody knows everybody else's business — and everybody has something to hide. And then think of a cruise ship. It is, when you consider it, the perfect mystery setting. Thousands of people, drawn from every walk of life, thrown together in a floating world of extraordinary luxury and going absolutely nowhere. There is no getting off. No slipping away into the crowd. No quiet exit through the back door. The sea stretches out in every direction, indifferent and enormous, and the Coral Queen moves steadily through it while her passengers eat, drink, swim, argue, flirt, scheme and, in a Rachel Prince mystery, occasionally turn up dead. A World Unto Itself The Coral Queen is not just a backdrop. Over fifteen books, it has become one of the great settings in contemporary cosy mystery fiction as vivid and familiar to devoted readers as Agatha Christie's St Mary Mead. The ship has its own geography: the Lido Deck with its pools gleaming in the Mediterranean sun; the Jazz Bar, where the band plays and champagne flows; the Martini Bar, where the conversations get dangerous the later the hour; the medical centre on deck two, where Sarah and the medical team hold clinics and trouble reliably presents itself; the sweeping corridors lined with passenger cabins that could contain almost any secret. In Honeymoon Cruise Murder, the Coral Queen arrives at the story freshly returned from six months dry dock in Scotland, refurbished from bow to stern. New décor throughout. A brand new crew pool, complete with Jacuzzi, replacing the one with the perpetually blocked pumps. An extended bar with more seating. Even the cabins shared by…