Dangerous Cargo: An Art Marvik Mystery

The south coast of England and its waters provide the main backdrop for Rowson’s disappointing second contemporary mystery featuring former Royal Marine commando Art Marvik (after 2015’s Silent Running). At a church in Dorset, Marvik and his former Marine buddy Shaun Strathen attend the funeral of Bradley Pulford, who appeared in the area in 1989, worked as a fisherman, fathered a child, and then went missing in 1991. The problem is, Pulford died in 1959. So who was impersonating him? Full of bitterness over his unhappy upbringing and nagging regrets for failed responsibilities, Marvik slogs through an exhausting series of mistaken identities and governmental and corporate finagling related to a number of deaths. More murder and mayhem follow, some of it performed by Marvik himself. Rowson relies heavily on exploring Marvik’s psyche through gobbets of internal monologue and interspersed historical passages that too often read like reference material, slowing the momentum of what otherwise might have been a marginally exciting plot-driven waterborne thriller. (Sept.)