4 years ago, I took a river cruise up the Rhône River in the South of France with my mother. I wrote a blog post about it, complete with photographs, and this is the story that developed from that trip.
It was a wonderful experience, and we met lots of interesting and nice people, both the passengers and the crew of our ship.
My mother exhorted me to write a murder mystery that takes place on the ship, covering a week’s worth of time, just as our trip did. I thought that over, looked at novels by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and P.D. James, and realized that, much as I loved reading their work, that is not the right genre for me.
Therefore, I wrote what I know: a novel that deals with the issues I research. Human overpopulation on a finite planet with a collapsing ecosystem was not left out, as it is a fixture in my novels. Added to that is another issue that I researched for this story.
Intrigue On a Longship Cruise is part travelogue, complete with photographs, and part mystery-adventure story. It is a travel novel that includes a threat that we should all be aware of.
This novel continues the story of Arielle, the woman who took in the alien botanist Ileandra in What the Small Gray Visitor Said, but with a different situation: Arielle and her aunt, Eloise, have gone on a river cruise in the South of France, up the Rhône River, for a vacation together after the pandemic.
It has two stories in one: a travelogue of a luxury cruise, complete with color photographs that include gourmet dining, the national marionette of France, perfume, historic and archaeological sites, art, plus a tale of murder, and the threat of something much worse than murder. What could be worse than murder, you might ask? Read it to find out.
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