Clarke, Anna Last Voyage.

Start with a little Hitchcock à la “Spellbound,” add a dash of Maxim de Winter (Rebecca) and a whole lot of cardboard (think Nancy Drew) and you’ve got this peculiar World War 2 shipboard murder mystery. Though the murder in question actually occurred in 1929 on a liner bound for London from Cape Town, most of Clarke’s action takes place either aboard a similar vessel en route to Southampton in early Sept. 1939 or in London (at, among other locales, a shipping line office and at a former steward’s East End flat) during the early days of the War.