A DECLINE IN PROPHETS

By Sulari Gentill

Rowland Sinclair and his friends are returning from abroad and heading home to Sydney, Australia, on the passenger ship RMS Aquitania. The year is 1932, and the journey over the water is filled with danger, especially to Rowland as he’s found himself again and again pulled into matters that slander his family name. Worse yet, among the passengers on this beautiful ship is a merciless killer.

Rowland is loaded with money so he treated his artist friends; a poet, a sculptor, and a painter to first-class cabins. Joining them on the passenger list are members of the Theosophical Society, who are mixing it up with prophets and bishops when, of course, the worst happens. There is a murder aboard.

With the society a little on the liberal side, and an Irish Catholic Bishop and his friends on the conservative side of the coin, it’s easy to understand that these two groups do not get along, much to the dismay of the captain as the dead bodies begin to pile up.

Rowland becomes a suspect in the first death, but is cleared before the ship docks in Australia. Unfortunately, the murderer doesn’t stop when the trip ends. More crimes occur off the ship in Sydney, and even in some of the most magnificent and elaborate houses in the area. Rowland finds himself ensconced in a twisted plan where he may just be the only clear mind that can solve and stop it all.

Author Sulari Gentill not only writes a fantastic mystery, but she offers up very interesting historical tidbits that readers will love to learn. It wouldn’t be off the mark to say that if the great Agatha Christie read a Rowland Sinclair mystery, she would most definitely applaud.