I listened to this novel on Audiobooks, not knowing anything about it beforehand. The concept sounded fascinating - in the 1930s a biracial British woman named Lena Aldridge is grieving the loss of her father from tuberculosis and gets caught up in the drama surrounding the murder of her best friend's husband. She gets offered a job on Broadway from an agent named Charlie Bacon and impulsively decides to pursue the opportunity, sailing the high seas on the Queen Mary to NYC to follow her dreams. On the voyage, she becomes embroiled in more drama with the dysfunctional wealthy Abernathy family when the patriarch is murdered at the dining table. Lena must keep her wits about her as she navigates the many deceptions around her and protect herself as there may be a target on her back as well.

Everything about this sounded promising and it had all the elements I would love in a mystery - my favourite era, a strong female lead character, adventure on the high seas in a glamourous setting and an adequate amount of dead bodies! However it lacked many things in the delivery sadly. The author failed to make use of that glamourous era and setting, the police were a bit too obviously corrupt to be believable and the story just rambled on and on. The ending was disappointing and lacklustre and it felt like the author had gotten fed up with it herself by that point. Unfortunate as it was a missed opportunity.