Passenger 23 by Sebastian Fitzek

German undercover detective Martin Schwartz is a man with nothing to lose. Five years before, his wife and young son died on a cruise ship, his wife apparently drugging and throwing his son overboard before jumping herself. Now he takes on the Berlin police force’s toughest assignments and thinks nothing of putting himself in harm’s way. When he receives a mysterious summons from an old woman who is using her retirement money to travel, and permanently live on, the same boat on which his family died, he can’t help but go. Because it transpires another child, who went missing from the ship in a separate incident, and who was presumed to have died, has reappeared.

On board Schwartz, the captain of the ship, the ship’s doctor, and another passenger who’s a professional thief all become embroiled in the mystery (though separately to an extent, the thief in particular is not linked to the others). The fear is there’s a serial killer on board. But are they in fact keeping their victims alive and captive somewhere? And if so, how?

I only recently discovered Sebastian Fitzek, reading and reviewing his novel The Package. I loved that book; it had a crazy rollercoaster of a plot and didn’t even pretend to be realistic, opting instead for non-stop thrills and twists and turns. Passenger 23 is similar in a way - there are certainly twists and turns aplenty - and it’s far-fetched, but I didn’t find it as much of a rollercoaster ride as The Package.

That said, what I did really enjoy in this novel was its sense of place. It’s a cliché when talking about crime fiction that it has to have a sense of place. While many novels strive to bring a location to life, the adage isn’t particularly true, and there are many successful and gripping crime novels which focus more on other aspects, such as characterisation. The Package didn’t really have a sense of place and the storyline could have occurred in any town, but it was still a brilliant book. Passenger 23 has a sense of place though, and a really quite unique one which the author utilises to full effect.

Every year several passengers and crew go missing on cruise ships. This is absolutely true, I’ve read about this in non-fiction news articles and seen documentaries about it, it’s a little-known aspect of the industry. Indeed, in the text of Passenger 23, a character mentions the websites and blogs set up to document all this and support the families whose loved ones have disappeared (internationalcruisevictims.org, cruisejunkie.com, cruisebruise.com); these sites all exist and can be checked out by the reader. For the novel’s purposes, the author claims 23 people go missing every year. I don’t know if that’s an actual figure or one the author has invented for the narrative, but the general idea is true: people go missing every year. Some are undoubtedly suicides, it’s easy to jump off a ship after all, but some could easily be homicides. Because again, as portrayed in the story, it’s for the police of the country the cruise ship is flagged under to investigate any incidents, and for tax and other reasons, this is unlikely to be a first world nation like the US, Germany, or the UK, but a small nation with an under-resourced police force.  

What all this amounts to, and what people don’t realise, is that cruise ships are actually relatively lawless locations, and thus the perfect place to commit a crime, not least a murder. Throughout the narrative of the novel, the author portrays this brilliantly and in fact I actually enjoyed this environment more than I did the plot of the novel. I’m surprised more crime novels aren’t set on cruise ships and while the primary plot of Passenger 23 is the potential serial killer on board, there’s another subplot which is hinted at and which could quite easily have been a story in its own right.

Passenger 23 is a psychological thriller with plenty of twists and turns. I didn’t enjoy its plot as much as I did that of the author’s previous title, The Package, but its setting was unique and he portrayed it well. This is a novel that’s certainly worth a read.

3 out of 5 stars