Lying in the Deep (2023) by Diana Urban was brought to my attention by a piece the author wrote on CrimeReads in which she said that she had taken the setup and some “iconic plot beats” from Death on the Nile (1938) by Agatha Christie in order to inform the structure of her own book. Holy lawsuit, Batman, colour me intrigued.

Urban’s teenage take, then, starts with Jade Miller boarding a ship for a four-month program called Campus on Board, which will bring hundreds of college-age Americans to Europe for cultural enrichment — a wonderful experience, marred somewhat by the fact that Jade has recently been dumped by Silas Fakelastname, “the love of my life”, who then instantly hooked up with Jade’s former best friend, Lainey Silverton. And then, to compound a felony, who should Jade spot in the queue for the Sea Voyager but Silas and Lainey, coupled up and lovey-dovey? The next four months suddenly look a lot less fun…

The first half of Lying in the Deep, then, follows a fairly expected pattern: every time Jade tries to enjoy herself with the new friends she makes on board, there are Lainey and Silas to remind her of what she has lost. Some light cultural enrichment occurs, and all the time the sharks of motive are circling, since we know from the prologue that Jade is going to discover Lainey’s cabin covered in blood at some point…so who among the youth on board has sufficient motive to kill her? Someone certainly seems to be getting warmed up for that, when a stone slab is nearly dropped on Lainey’s head while the group tours the Tower of London, so it’s only a matter of time before things get more serious.

Now, I’m not the teenager this book is aimed at, and so it will hardly surprise you that I found this opening half pretty tiresome. Everyone has crushes and wants to be a social media entrepreneur, and Jade falls in with the Brooding, Mysterious, and Handsome Felix as a ploy to make Silas jealous, and every so often someone will mention that Lainey’s dad priced the medicine his company sells too high so their mum died from a preventable illness, or that Lainey sabotaged their social media accounts and they’re really mad at her, and…well, it kinda drags.

It helps, though, that, while Urban’s structuring of events is loose and needs a damn good prune, some of what she writes is great:

[T]his was my last chance to do my World Art History assignment: a scavenger hunt for five British works of art containing symbolism. We had to take selfies with them to prove we’d found them IRL rather than looking them up online. You’d think that’d be easy — doesn’t all art contain symbolism? — but the portraits of nobles in rich skirts and fine silks had no clear theme beyond their own self-importance…

And while Jade’s constant mooning over Silas and Lainey gets tiresome, I can’t deny that Urban catches the treacherous feelings of the death of first love well, and has a good turn of phrase when it’s needed:

They’d been in a constant tug-of-war over me, then suddenly took the rope and strangled me with it.

Drinking ensues, Silas is stabbed in the leg — don’t ask, it’s…convoluted — and Jade goes to Lainey’s room for a reason I’ve honestly forgotten already and finds her former BFF not in evidence but blood splattered everywhere. And then another student dies, and another…

The second half is pretty good, albeit again in need of a trim and some restructuring. Urban has laid the groundwork for those unconvincing motives well, so that you feel someone might be moved to murder over accusations of buying followers for their Instagram feed (god, I feel old), and there’s an occasional attempt to look full in the face of the vapidity that such concerns promulgate.

Wow. People were dying — including his own roommate — and all he could think about were his social media accounts. He’d tied his entire sense of self to his social media, and once they disappeared, so had he — it was all he cared about, even when the very real world around him was crumbling.

There’s even something that at times brushes up against logical reasoning, such as bottles not being replaced in height order as would normally be the case, so that, while not exactly detection, this isn’t quite as brainless a thrill-fest as I might have anticipated. Hell, the moment someone refers to Jade as “a regular little Poirot” and she has no idea what they mean might even have gotten a laugh out of me. True, this is the sort of book where, once the workings of the plot are revealed, they’re very much revealed rather than deduced — there’s an extended monologue or two towards the end — but, as Brad as recently pointed out, if you’re coming to these mysteries for the mystery (and I’m aware that most of my readers aren’t approaching these books at all) you really need to aim for the younger market of 8 to 12 year-olds rather than this sort of teenage booze-and-almost-sex-but-definitely-no-drugs stratum of things.

Anyway, Urban does well to keep Jade at the centre of suspicion — though, crikey, even my handwriting isn’t bad enough to make one particular plot point fly — and then everything gets explained and…

…it actually sorta makes sense. Sure, it’s a little convoluted, and modern policing and forensic methodology has reached a point where it wouldn’t work, but the reason behind it all is actually pretty solid, even if Jade is then rather too willing to frame someone for a crime we only suspect they’ve committed on somewhat dubious grounds…lord, I hope she’s not training to be a lawyer. Lainey’s blood-soaked cabin, the actions of certain characters…it’s pretty well-thought-out, it makes sense, it holds together. Even the flaws which exist feel organic, because teenagers wouldn’t be aware of foresnic techniques — and, sure, I don’t believe for a second that this is a deliberate part of Urban’s scheme, but I enjoyed the patterns she weaves so much that I’m willing to tell myself it might be.

And then everything falls apart.

The final monologue is where things get a little ridiculous, not least because I’m sure — not an opinion based on experience, let’s be very clear — that it’s far harder to strangle someone to death than certain books seem to think. Have you read The Godwulf Manuscript (1973) by Robert B. Parker? Read The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker, and then tell me you think it’s as easy to strangle someone to death as just putting your hands on their neck and everything going conveniently black for a few moments. There’s also a lot of bullshit technology thrown around to join some points up, which I could have done without, so on the whole it’s a mixed bag of a conclusion. But at least it will distract you from realising that exactly who tipped that stone onto Lainey at the Tower of London is never actually settled. You’ll miss that entirely.

As a ‘take’ on Death on the Nile — never one of my favourite Chisties, though I’m regularly assured that this is tantamount to apostasy — this is…fine. It’s too long, too much happens, it links up weirdly, and the eventual answer is far cleverer than the book deserves…oh, so actually it mirrors Death on the Nile perfectly, right the way down to the finishing flourish. I’m honestly intrigued as to where ‘inspired by’ ends and the ground for a lawsuit begins, and Urban is at least trying to do more than just trade off Christie comparisons that she’s stirring to life, but as a book overall I think you can leave this to the teen in your household and pass onto more interesting projects elsewhere.