A luxury cruise liner, abandoned with no crew, steaming into the mid-Atlantic.
And you are the only passenger left on board.
Caz Ripley, a cafe owner from a small, ordinary town, boards the RMS Atlantica with her boyfriend Pete and a thousand fellow passengers destined for New York.
The next morning, she wakes to discover that everyone else on board has disappeared.
And that’s just the beginning. Caz must prepare for a crossing that will be anything but plain sailing …
We've reached the time of year where the Christmas commercials have been exchanged for holiday adverts but if you're considering booking a cruise, you might change your mind after reading Will Dean's unnerving high concept thriller The Last Passenger. He's caused me a different sort of problem, however, and while I'm not complaining, the twists and turns in this addictive novel means it's very difficult to explain why I enjoyed it so much without giving anything away.
As the author of the superb Tuva Moodyson series set in rural Sweden, as well as two gripping standalone thrillers, The Last Thing to Burn and First Born, Will Dean's impressive body of work continually reinforces just how good he is at creating an immersive sense of place and he excels himself in The Last Passenger. The opening scenes as Caz and her boyfriend, Pete aboard the RMS Atlantica vividly evokes the opulence of a grand liner. Although they only make a brief appearance, her interaction with other passengers at their dinner in the Platinum Grill room underlines the social structures and expectations which within a few pages will have to be forgotten if Caz is to survive.
After she realises that Pete and indeed the other passengers and crew have apparently disembarked without her, Caz's response is unsurprisingly confused. She is panicked and upset but assumes a simple mistake has been made, and she still has the presence of mind to search the ship, hoping to find out what has happened. Following the first few revelations which soon take place, she remains unsettled but is able to console herself with the knowledge that she is safe on board a well-appointed and comfortable ocean liner. She still believes the ship is on course for New York and although this isn't the journey she'd planned, she is relatively calm; she accepts the crossing will be more challenging but it's already been made clear that her past experiences mean she has an inner strength which allow her to be resolute in the face of these unforeseen conditions.
However, this is a thriller, of course and so her situation soon becomes far more precarious as a disturbingly sinister plan is revealed. One of the most striking aspects of The Last Passenger is how quickly a spacious and luxurious floating hotel becomes more like an oppressive prison. Caz is forced to take extraordinary steps to survive and as the tension intensifies, she is tested to her absolute limits – both physically and emotionally. The shocks and surprises come thick and fast, both for Caz and the readers and there are some breathtakingly nerve-racking scenes as her plight seems to become increasingly hopeless.
The development of her character is excellent throughout The Last Passenger. Even before she is thrust into such an extraordinary state of affairs, she has already had to open up to Pete about her troubled childhood and throughout the book she continues to worry about her family. She is evidently inclined to nurture others, almost certainly at her own expense but here she is compelled to confront her past and examine how it has influenced her life.
There is a reason why Caz has been left on board the Atlantica but of course, I'm not going to divulge why here. However, I can say that as well as creating the perfect set of circumstances for a white-knuckle voyage across the Atlantic, where the stakes couldn't be higher, Will Dean also explores a fascinating topic, which while obviously heightened for dramatic effect, is still uncomfortably plausible. Humanity's endless appetite to derive pleasure from the misery of others is perhaps more frightening than any of the horribly upsetting or dangerous moments Caz is subjected to.
The best thrillers are those which set pulses racing but which are perceptively thought-provoking too; The Last Passenger is so wildly entertaining, I read it in a day but as well as being almost unbearably suspenseful, it's also an chillingly insightful read and one that I very highly recommend.
The Last Passenger is published by Hodder & Stoughton, purchasing links can be found here.
About the Author
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| Credit: Rosalind Hobley |
Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands and had lived in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying Law at the LSE and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden where he built a house in a boggy clearing at the centre of a vast elk forest, and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. His debut novel, Dark Pines, was selected for Zoe Ball’s Book Club, shortlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize and named a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year. Red Snow was published in January 2019 and won Best Independent Voice at the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards, 2019. Black River was shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Award in 2021. Will’s first standalone novel, The Last Thing to Burn was shortlisted for Thriller Book of the Year at the Fingerprint Awards 2022, Crime Novel of the Year at the Theakston Old Peculier Awards 2022 and the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2022, and was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award 2022. . The fourth book in his Tuva Moodyson series, Bad Apples was published in 2021, with the fifth, Wolf Pack following in 2022. His second standalone thriller First Born was also released in 2022. In 2023 it was announced that the TV adaptation of Dark Pines about deaf journalist Tuva Moodyson will star former EastEnders actor and Strictly Come Dancing winner Rose Ayling-Ellis in the lead role.
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