How boring is sailing?

The Sunken Sailor by Patricia Moyes

aka Down Among the Dead Men (in USA)

published 1961

 

 

This was the second of Patricia Moyes’ crime books featuring Henry and Emmy Tibbett. The first, Dead Men Don’t Ski, 1959, is  here on the blog.

Both of them have excellent, enticing, titles. Both revolve round a hobby or pastime, and have – in my view – far too much detail about something. In Ski it is the timetable of the skilift, which I reproduced in the post. Here is it sailing, and the phrase dull as ditchwater has never been more appropriate.

I enjoyed Ski much more in fact – this one got completely lost in the sailing details and the boom and the tides and the dinghys. I found it difficult to distinguish among the various boring male characters, and Moyes does surprisingly little with the female characters. There is a very cliched young minx character, an old drunken woman who makes no sense, and a great friend of the Tibbetts who has zero character.

This is Anne, the minx:

She was a tiny slip of a girl: indeed, with her cropped dark hair and faded blue jeans, she might almost have been taken for a schoolboy, were it not for a certain very definite femininity of contour that even a sweater several sizes too large could not hide. She was as brown as honey, and her green eyes — ^which slanted upwards as delicately as a cat's — sparkled with high spirits and a zest for life which was immensely attractive. She had, Henry decided, the miniature perfection of a Japanese girl, without the latter's doll-like fragility. In fact, even as he admired, the thought crossed his mind. This girl's like a nut — smooth and brown and sweet and hard.

I always have issues about Emmy-as-doormat  - featured in this overview post and in the recent post on Moyes’ Who is Simon Warwick? That one incited the recent long list of questionmark titles, but also brought this book to my attention in the comments, Jotell saying the early Moyes books were best – a difference of opinion! Here – as in Warwick – Emmy gets into difficulties, and Henry behaves in a quite extraordinary way. Can’t say much for spoilers.

Maybe people who like sailing will get on well with Sunken Sailor. But for me there was far too much of this:

The dusk was deepening fast as Ariadne swung round Steep Hill Point. "Harden sheets," called Alastair. Henry pulled on the jib sheet as the boat swung broadside on to the wind. At once, she heeled over smartly, and tossed up a spurt of spray over her bows, which caught Henry neatly in the back of the neck.

But there were also better moments – the local poshos are Sir Simon and his sister Priscilla, and Henry is chatting…

"I know," said Sir Simon, suddenly, "that fellows like Benson and Rawnsley don't agree with me, but to my way of thinking, Priscilla's the great beauty in Berrybridge. Not as young as she was, perhaps, but I'd back her against these jazzy modern types any day. Do you agree?"

For one hysterical moment, Henry thought that Sir Simon was talking about his sister. Then, in the nick of time, he saw that the motor launch had the name Priscilla picked out in brass letters on her stern.

“She’s lovely,” he said sincerely.

The plot takes in a jewel robbery and  a hunt ball in the past – features I always like, but they don’t feature enough.

I read the UK version, and didn’t have much clue as to who was who. I then looked at a US edition (with the alternate title, Down Among the Dead Men) which had one of those weird character lists at the beginning:

COLIN STREET— The quick-witted owner of the Mary Jane. What had Pete Rawnsley taken from him that made him murderously mad?

ANNE PETRIE— The pretty green-eyed mate on the Mary Jane. Was Pete Rawnsley the man she really loved . . . and was she the last to see him alive?

…AND WHY HAD THEY ALL DECIDED TO LIE?

Which read very oddly, but certainly would have helped.

Top picture from Vivat Vintage.  A good 10 years earlier and not remotely looking like jolly times in Essex, but I did like the picture.

Similarly the woman on deck – right era but perhaps too fashionable. But definitely an air of the minx-y Anne.  From a great favourite source, Florida Memories.

The chap at the wheel is the right era, 1961, but is in the Bahamas and generally looks a lot more carefree than British sailors might be.  Again, Florida Memories.