Death on the Lusitania
R.L. Graham
Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 978-1035021918
400pp.

RL. Graham is the collective nom de plume of a husband-and-wife team who were experts in World War I scholarship (tragically, the wife passed away from cancer while this book was being written). The couple (who, for convenience’s sake, I will simply refer to as the author Graham) brings their considerable academic expertise into creating an Agatha Christie-style locked-room mystery.

The book lives up to its reputation in that its setting of 1915 (smack in the middle of the Great War of 1914-1918) is delineated with marvellous authenticity. Graham situates the action on board the RMS Lusitania, a famous luxury liner that was historically torpedoed by a German U-20 submarine off the coast of the United Kingdom as it was nearing the end of its trans-Atlantic voyage from New York to the UK.

The book’s protagonist, Patrick Gallagher, who ostensibly works for the British Paymaster General’s Office, is charged with conveying the former British vice-consul in New York, Harry Chalfont, safely to the UK. Chalfont is suspected of being a major German spy, and virtually every other major character in the novel also has a complex past. It appears likely that a German-American named Charles Schurz, who is a notable engineer with a sound knowledge of arms and armaments, may also be a spy for the Germans.

Meanwhile, William Ripley, a theatrical impresario whose plays have failed consistently, appears to be in desperate need of money. Edwin Franklin, an American industrialist as rich as Croesus, the Lydian king, comes across as a very overbearing character. He is second in unpleasantness, however, to the businessman James Dowrich, who seems to have an unsavoury hold over many of the other characters.........

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