Murder on the Lusitania

Murder on the Lusitania is the first novel in Conrad Allen's long-running ocean-liner mystery series, and the inaugural setting (the Cunard line's newest ship, on a transatlantic crossing in 1907) carries a particular charge. George Porter Dillman, the American detective working for Cunard, and Genevieve Masefield, who joins the investigation, are introduced here, with their initial wariness towards each other taking up a useful third of the book.

The case itself involves a piece of jewelry, a possible blackmail scheme, and a body in a first-class cabin. The shipboard geography is the pleasure. Allen renders the Lusitania with the kind of detail that makes you wish you could walk its corridors, which the book inadvertently gives a tragic edge given the ship's 1915 fate (which the novel pointedly does not reach).

Three stars. The series gets stronger after this debut. Read for completeness or for the maritime setting.