by Joseph O’Connor

Board the Star of the Sea in starving, famine-struck Ireland if you can afford it. You may be hoping for a new life in the New World, but you will find yourself in Hell.

TLDR: A dark, Irish historical novel — a murder mystery — set on a famine ship traveling from Ireland to New York in 1847. Brilliant writing; scathing account of English abuses in Ireland. Read this if you like your mysteries moody and steeped in history.

A ship leaves famine struck Ireland in the winter of 1847, bound for New York. On board, an elite group of affluent (mostly English) characters enjoy a relatively normal — if boring and cramped, by their standards — life in the first-class accommodations.

Meanwhile, steerage is overstuffed with starved, desperate Irish who are freezing and dying. Every day, bodies are thrown overboard. Some were already near death when they got on board. In Ireland the English landed class — with the help of the potato famine — is already starving the Irish to death without mercy. These are a few who scraped together a ticket to get out. Some survive longer than those whose bodies are tossed overboard as the ship leaves port. But many didn’t bring enough food for the long journey. Others are left to sleep in the overcrowded ship without beds or blankets, and freeze. The women aren’t safe from the men. Oh, and there is a plague running around down there.

This is a murder mystery. A ship where the Irish are dying in droves is a good place for evil to hide — and for a murderer to act without fear of being caught. It’s hard to discern the natural deaths from the unnatural ones and no one seems to care who dies anyway.

So it’s more than a trip to Hell. It’s a locked-room mystery aboard a ship on its way to Hell.

Darker still? It’s a historical novel. Ships exactly like this one did leave Ireland during the famine. They dumped the starving, sick, and frozen bodies of the Irish natives into the ocean as they sailed, often arriving at their destination full of corpses.

It’s a great premise, excellently executed. So if you like your mysteries dark and your history darker, this is for you.

Add to this story, a captain who is at the end of his tolerance for the inhumane treatment of humans and the stomach-churning, predictable death happening on his watch and it’s a compelling depiction of the British treatment of the Irish in the 1800s.

Oh, there is also a revolution tossed in for good measure and an ending you won’t see coming.

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