About Crime Quiz
Cosy (Cozy) Mystery
Setting - On a cruise from Sydney to Hobart in Australia
Publisher: Stanley Press
Publication date: September 26, 2025
Paperback Print length: 198 pages
ISBN-10: 1763510050 / ISBN-13: 978-1763510050
Digital ISBN-13: 978-1763510043 / ASIN: B0FL53FVV6
Molly should be on her honeymoon, but her husband had disappeared.
Thomas should be preaching, but the bishop had other ideas.
Lynette should be in Aspen, but her doctor refused to let her fly.
At 5.00am on the fourth day of the cruise, Captain Jonas Strong announces that five passengers have died overnight.
Were this a cruise with the usual guest profile, such news may have caused a temporary flutter of nerves before being forgotten. But the Oceanic Wanderer was hosting a Crime Writers’ Conference with hundreds of amateur sleuths who were now wondering, if there was more to the announcement than they were being told.
Was there a murderer among them?
CRIME QUIZ delivers a cosy-mystery caper in a cruisy setting.
REVIEW:
Fun, cozy mystery set on a crime writing themed cruise.
Crime Quiz: Cruising for Clues by T.J. Stanley is a fun who-dun-it set on a five-day mystery-writing-themed voyage from Sydney to Hobart and back. Inspired by an actual occurrence, the deaths of five passengers onboard a cruise ship overnight, the story features the events before and after the discovery of the fictional deceased during a major at sea.
The story focuses on a small party of passengers, who, with the exception of one mother-son couple, are complete strangers to one another at the start of their voyage. But as the cruise’s crime writers conference gets underway, their participation in the offered activities brings them together with unexpected results. By the time of the storm, the ill-fated five are all connected to this one group.
While told mainly from the viewpoint of the newly-unemployed cleric and aspiring author, Reverend Thomas Martin, other characters also get their moments in the spotlight. Interesting secondary storylines develop, and readers get to know the characters who will soon become possible suspects in a bold shipboard crime. The author packs a lot of story in this lively novella-length mystery. I enjoyed the book’s unique and unexpected resolution, as well as the mentions of mysteries and their authors that arose during the passengers’ excursion to literary-connected locations in Hobart.
I recommend CRIME QUIZ to readers of cozy mysteries, especially
those who enjoy stories set on cruise ships or in Australia or Tasmania.
TOUR PARTICIPANTS:
September 25 – Jody's Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
