Book & A Movie: MURDER BOATS

Or, if you want to be classier: Murder at Sea?

I know that it makes (some) people irritated when landlubbers refer to various kinds of floating transportation—yachts and whatnot—as ‘boats.’ But, I dunno, if it floats and it brings you from one place to another, I feel like you can call it a boat?

…then again, this argument feels like it’s flirting with ‘is a hot dog a sandwich?’ territory, and lord knows we don’t want to go THERE.

All that aside, I am definitely a land person—I have nothing but respect and love for the ocean, but I also know that it could just reach out and kill me if it decided to, so I’ll appreciate it from way over here on solid ground, thanks.

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Panic fluttered in my chest. “Isn’t there security footage?” There had to be some proof it wasn’t me. “There’s CCTV everywhere here, right?”

The Beefeater chuckled. “You’re a regular little Poirot, aren’t you?” I had no idea what that meant.

—Lying in the Deep, by Diana Urban

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Book cover: Lying in the Deep, by Diana Urban

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I’m going to keep this pretty short and sweet: Diana Urban’s Lying in the Deep is a whole lot of fun. It’s a reimagining of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile starring college kids on a Semester at Sea-type program, narrated by Jade, a girl whose long-term boyfriend recently dumped her—via text—for her best friend.

She’s gutted by the double betrayal, but hopeful that this change of scenery will help to start the healing process… and the last thing she expects when she’s boarding is to see that the two of them are participating in the same program. She thought she’d have time AWAY from every memory of them, but now the three of them are going to be stuck in the same space for the next four months. It’s a big boat, sure—but when you’re trying to avoid someone, no confined space is going to feel big enough.

I loved how it updated and played with the original story—over the course of Lying in the Deep, our protagonist realizes that her major heartbreak is less about losing her boyfriend, and more about losing her best friend. If you know the original story, you know what a big change that is—both because of how the mystery plays out as well as the motivation under the crime.

I loved that there was no Poirot analogue, and that other than the quote I included above, there weren’t a ton of direct references to Christie. Which isn’t to ding books that have done the opposite! I’ve read plenty that have gone the other way and enjoyed those as well—but in this case I think it made it feel fresh, which I hadn’t expected given how well I know the original story. While I called a key part of the solution pretty early on, I wasn’t SURE about motivations and whodunnit, to the point where I wasn’t sure if my narrator was entirely trustworthy—because, again, I know the original and I’ve read a lot of Christie.

I almost DIED when Urban worked in the Fake Boyfriend trope about halfway through—it’s a Top Three fave trope of mine, so I admit to squealing with delight. And bonus, I double-almost-died because of the character involved, who I suspect was based on Ferguson, the crushworthy crabby-but-handsome communist from the original. (I might be conflating the book character with the movie character from the 1978 movie version, which I have seen a gazillion times. Regardless, I’d wager a bag of Haribo snozzberries that Felix is based on him, right down to his clothing.)

I read the whole thing in an afternoon. Fun, soapy stuff; lively & entertaining cast of characters; solid mystery; romance to root for; and a couple of nice threads about how our pasts inform our presents, and how people who are willing to consider how their own actions contribute to conflict grow, and how people who aren’t… don’t.

Good thing we’re about to head into Prime Backyard Reading time, because I’m very definitely going back to read Urban’s other thrillers.

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More Agatha

Agatha Christie, Teen Detective(s)

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Related-ish interlude

While I was writing the intro for this post, I suddenly flashed back to a middle grade novel I read 9,000 times as a kid—The Animal, the Vegetable, and John D. Jones, by Betsy Byars—and given the whole girl-accidentally-floats-away-on-an-inflatable-raft storyline, I suddenly think it might have a WHOLE LOT to do with my feelings about the ocean? I’ll have to track it down and see how it holds up.

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The Last of Sheila movie poster, still of James Coburn being rad, still of the cast

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If you follow my Instagram feed, you’ll probably already know what movie I’m pairing this with, and it’s NOT my beloved 1978 adaptation of Death on the Nile. (Which, by the way, is streaming on Tubi. If you’ve never watched it, you’re missing out on the divine Angela Lansbury doing her damnedest to devour ALL of the scenery, she’s wonderful.)

No, reading this one spurred me to watch The Last of Sheila (Herbert Ross, 1973) AGAIN, even though I just watched a couple of months ago.

Based on a script co-written by ANTHONY PERKINS and STEPHEN SONDHEIM?? Starring, among others, JAMES COBURN, JAMES MASON, RAQUEL WELCH, IAN McSHANE, and HOUSEHOLD CRUSH DYAN CANNON???

What else do you need to know?

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Well, if you liked Glass Onion, know that after the first ten minutes of this movie, I turned to Josh and was like, HOLY SHIT, RIAN JOHNSON LOVES THIS MOVIE. Like, I think maybe Glass Onion’s parents are Vertigo and The Last of Sheila? (No, I have not googled this to see if I’m imagining things. I don’t want to know if I’m wrong, I’ll just live over here in the little fantasy world I’ve created.)

ANYWAY. James Coburn invites a bunch of friends—some might say frenemies—for a week on his yacht, and he’s got a BIG GAME planned. A game that involves somewhat nasty SECRETS. Because secrets are never dangerous, right?

The performances are great—Dyan Cannon is CONSTANTLY eating and just, like, making out with various boat staff dudes and flopping around on furniture like a complete dirtbag and I can’t handle how much I love her:

Dyan Cannon, making herself at home

Ian McShane is a little baby and wears flared pants with aplomb. I covet his sweaters.

James Mason always rules.

Ditto Coburn.

Richard Benjamin’s mustache is a character unto itself, Joan Hackett is appropriately tense and tragic, Raquel Welch is impossibly gorgeous.

The first time I watched it, I was gutted that it didn’t lead to some absurd television crime series starring James Mason and Dyan Cannon solving mysteries. Now, after watching it a second time, I still want that, but maybe with the added bonus of them also blackmailing the murderers, because if this movie is saying anything, it’s definitely saying that folks in Hollywood are cutthroat.

STAR-STUDDED MURDER MYSTERIES! PREFERABLY BITCHY! PUT THEM ALL IN MY EYEBALLS!

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Dyan Cannon being awesome. In the scene where she’s lolling around on the raft, she yells up to someone on the boat, “Honey, would you drop me down a Tab? My mouth is so dry, I feel like they could shoot "Lawrence of Arabia" in it.” WHICH, WHAT A QUEEN. Also get a load of that Muppet skin she’s wearing in the shot with Ian McShane. Josh’s fave pic, obvs, is the one with the sailor hat.

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Talk soon,
Leila