Bear Bugger Cruise
by Rolf RichardsonThriller Suspense MysteryBook Overview
The sun is rising in the west! Cruise Lecturer Mike Handley is seeing things. The good ship Gioconda is heading south for the Caribbean, but there is the sun, large as life, on their starboard beam. As he tries to make sense of the impossible, they start a gentle turn, which eventually puts the sun, as it should be, over to port.Cruise ships do not normally sail round in circles, so when Mike meets security officer Hamish McPhee over breakfast, he asks what's going on. McPhee admits there has been a report of man overboard, but that the source, a new crew member, is not thought to be reliable. They had to go through the motions of searching, but the man was probably seeing things. This view gathers support when no one is found to me missing.
So the Gioconda continues on her world cruise, with the heady prospect of spending the whole of the northern winter under tropical skies. Mike Handley gets to know some of the punters: Daphne, who is leading a group of crazy cyclists; and the Sibbalds, a middle aged couple recently retired from Benidorm, whose sole purpose in life seems to be to spend as little as possible.
The master of the ship is Captain Bjoernson, a Norwegian of impressive ancestry, known to everyone as the Bear Bugger, because his surname means son of bear. With him is Jorunn, his daughter, who is contemplating a career as a seawoman.
As they approach Barbados, the first cracks appear in their schedule. The Gioconda is an old vessel, her engines feeling their years. Should she really embark on a voyage across the mighty Pacific, where the nearest port might be a week away?
For Mike, Barbados turns up another question, when he meets a lady called Jill Abbott, who is trying to find her Uncle, Mr. Bovis, whom she was due to escort back to London. But Mr. Bovis, who was certainly a passenger on the Gioconda, has apparently already disembarked. Without telling her. And has then vanished into thin air. Could there be a link between this mystery and the discredited man overboard?
There are no immediate answers to these questions, so the Gioconda continues on its way through the Caribbean, where the captain's daughter, Jorunn, soon acquires a new and unlikely boyfriend. Holed up in the owner's suite, the largest and most expensive on the ship, is Ronnie Finch, a young scaffolder of many tattoos, who has recently won a multi million pound lottery. After a row with his girl friend in St.Lucia, he is comforted by Jorunn. To everyone's astonishment, they develop into a formidable partnership, keen to make Ronnie's new millions work.
The Gioconda sails on, but how? And to where? Personalities and local politics combine to make this a mystery cruise, where no one could have predicted the outcome.
