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Bernice Summerfield: Virgin New Adventures #4
Ship Of Fools
'So who do I have to kill to get off this cruise?'
When Krytell Industries offered Benny a small, slightly dubious and, um, unofficial job aboard the majestic space cruise-liner, the Titanian Queen, she jumped at the chance. After all, with an unlimited expense account, an entire new wardrobe and more strings of pearls and other jewels than you could shake an Art Deco stick at, what more could a poor girl want?
That was then.
Now, the luckless if remarkably deserving passengers of the Titanian Queen are dropping like flies. Are the deaths the work of the mysterious criminal known as the Cat's Paw? Or is the super-rich businessman Krytell himself somehow involved? And will the great detective, Emil Dupont, finally stop getting things completely and utterly wrong and solve it all in time for tea and muffins?
Whatever's happening, Benny had better discover the truth for herself, and discover it soon. Before she suddenly finds herself another highly deplorable crime statistic.
When Krytell Industries offered Benny a small, slightly dubious and, um, unofficial job aboard the majestic space cruise-liner, the Titanian Queen, she jumped at the chance. After all, with an unlimited expense account, an entire new wardrobe and more strings of pearls and other jewels than you could shake an Art Deco stick at, what more could a poor girl want?
That was then.
Now, the luckless if remarkably deserving passengers of the Titanian Queen are dropping like flies. Are the deaths the work of the mysterious criminal known as the Cat's Paw? Or is the super-rich businessman Krytell himself somehow involved? And will the great detective, Emil Dupont, finally stop getting things completely and utterly wrong and solve it all in time for tea and muffins?
Whatever's happening, Benny had better discover the truth for herself, and discover it soon. Before she suddenly finds herself another highly deplorable crime statistic.
248 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1997
2 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Dave Stone
75 books16 followersStone has written many spin off novels based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who and Judge Dredd.
Stone also contributed a number of comic series to 2000AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, focusing on the Dreddverse (Judge Dredd universe). In collaboration with David Bishop and artist Shaky Kane he produced the much disliked Soul Sisters, which he has described as "a joke-trip, which through various degrees of miscommunication ended up as a joke-strip without any jokes." Working independently, he created the better received Armitage, a Dreddworld take on Inspector Morse set in a future London, and also contributed to the ongoing Judge Hershey series.
Stone’s most lasting contribution to the world of Judge Dredd might well have been his vision of Brit-Cit, which until Stone’s various novels had been a remarkably underexplored area.
Stone also contributed a number of comic series to 2000AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, focusing on the Dreddverse (Judge Dredd universe). In collaboration with David Bishop and artist Shaky Kane he produced the much disliked Soul Sisters, which he has described as "a joke-trip, which through various degrees of miscommunication ended up as a joke-strip without any jokes." Working independently, he created the better received Armitage, a Dreddworld take on Inspector Morse set in a future London, and also contributed to the ongoing Judge Hershey series.
Stone’s most lasting contribution to the world of Judge Dredd might well have been his vision of Brit-Cit, which until Stone’s various novels had been a remarkably underexplored area.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 29, 2024
Reread- 2024
if you asked me who the best Doctor Who writer is for extended universe in book form, I would struggle to answer, but if you asked me who the worst is I would have no hesitation in naming Dave Stone.
If people know me, then they know I have struggled with Dave Stone's works before. The last review I was perhaps a bit too generous, but rereading this book I noticed a lot more problematic things.
I tend to have trouble reading his books because quite a few of them have bits about mental health and they’re always… idk how to describe it really but it just puts me off… Dave stone is an author I have really, really mixed feelings about because on one hand his writing can be fun and enjoyable but on the other hands there’s a huge part of it that disturbs me too.
I also find Dave Stone tries to hard to be like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams and it does not pull off in the way he hopes. When he's not actually trying to be like someone else, and he's writing about Benny and the Cat's Paw, they were decent enough scenes.
Admittedly, most of his side characters were rather pointless as they got killed off and I did skim a lot on this novel.
Towards the end, we do get a lovely appearance from my boy, Irving Braxiatel which is ironically, one of the decent scenes he wrote out of the whole book.
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enjoyed this book immensely over the humorous murder mystery and typical assassin plotline. It was predictable as I figured out who was the Cat's paw and guessed the actual murderer on the second guess but otherwise great fun, especially to see Benny out of her typical environment and amongst the disgustingly, filthy rich and so-called famous detectives.
I also liked the alien she was working with whose culture was to use insults in every sentence and of course, the lovely Irving Braxiatel appearing at the end which was a lovely surprise.
The only thing I don't like about this book was Dave stone's writing about autism and autistic people and his attitude towards mental health but otherwise, it was good.
if you asked me who the best Doctor Who writer is for extended universe in book form, I would struggle to answer, but if you asked me who the worst is I would have no hesitation in naming Dave Stone.
If people know me, then they know I have struggled with Dave Stone's works before. The last review I was perhaps a bit too generous, but rereading this book I noticed a lot more problematic things.
I tend to have trouble reading his books because quite a few of them have bits about mental health and they’re always… idk how to describe it really but it just puts me off… Dave stone is an author I have really, really mixed feelings about because on one hand his writing can be fun and enjoyable but on the other hands there’s a huge part of it that disturbs me too.
I also find Dave Stone tries to hard to be like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams and it does not pull off in the way he hopes. When he's not actually trying to be like someone else, and he's writing about Benny and the Cat's Paw, they were decent enough scenes.
Admittedly, most of his side characters were rather pointless as they got killed off and I did skim a lot on this novel.
Towards the end, we do get a lovely appearance from my boy, Irving Braxiatel which is ironically, one of the decent scenes he wrote out of the whole book.
-
enjoyed this book immensely over the humorous murder mystery and typical assassin plotline. It was predictable as I figured out who was the Cat's paw and guessed the actual murderer on the second guess but otherwise great fun, especially to see Benny out of her typical environment and amongst the disgustingly, filthy rich and so-called famous detectives.
I also liked the alien she was working with whose culture was to use insults in every sentence and of course, the lovely Irving Braxiatel appearing at the end which was a lovely surprise.
The only thing I don't like about this book was Dave stone's writing about autism and autistic people and his attitude towards mental health but otherwise, it was good.
November 12, 2022
Dave Stone is one of the funnier authors associated with Doctor Who, and he contributes his first book to the non-Who range of Bernice Summerfield books in Ship Of Fools. It’s a murder mystery on a space liner, which isn’t wildly unusual territory for sci-fi, but I’m a sucker for comedic murder mysteries. (See also, Fergus Craig.) This one features some of Stone’s established habits - funny lists, characters with silly speech patterns, fourth wall breaks, references to all sorts of genre fiction - and it’s generally a fun, funny read. I thought it got a little too distracted by protracted jokes and didn’t give Bernice enough to do, but the mystery holds together well.
June 23, 2021
The last Dave Stone book I read was Heart of TARDIS, which was decent, but was essentially one big reference to The Simpsons. This made me a little apprehensive going into Ship of Fools, his first book for the Bernice Summerfield range, as one thing this range must stay away from doing is being overly referential to Doctor Who. Virgin Publishing no longer had the Doctor Who license so these references would have to be veiled, so it became a welcome surprise when outside of one big name drop of the Doctor being someone Benny travelled with, it is confined to interludes. These interludes are humorous sendups of the classic cinema serials with a Doctor Who twist, though the main character is Doctor Po and is revealed to be a character in the actual book in one of Stone’s many twists (and yes as with any Stone book there are many twists). This is also one of those books that’s a bit more disconnected from the arc, though not enough to make it unnecessary. Benny in particular gets a lot of follow up to Beyond the Sun where she had to confront for the first time that she still loves Jason and actually has to see him in that book. This book ends up really giving Benny a distraction, which makes a small Jason cameo right near the end hit a lot harder, especially once he is shacking up with his secretary/assistant (that fact isn’t quite made clear but it’s Jason Kane so you know how it is).
The story is a sendup of murder mysteries, sending a group of eccentrics into a secluded location and slowly killing them off with the notorious thief, the Cat’s Paw, who has stolen from Krytell Industries CEO, Marcus Krytell. Benny is the first on the list to help get it back and she must don a new persona: Bernice Summersdale, young widow looking for love on the Titanian Queen, and of course trouble follows. There are of course several detectives on the ship, the most important being Emil Dupont, who is apparently the greatest detective in the galaxy, but of course is more of a bumbling idiot while Benny tries to piece things together. There is also a minor character who is a parody of Miss. Marple, Agatha Magpole, a detective who attracted murderers which causes her to wear a headdress to stop that from happening. The bodies eventually drop after Benny gets to the bottom of who the Cat’s Paw is, and why they are not actually the murderer as they’ve never killed anyone. There is just something incredibly fun about this dynamic with Benny being surrounded by people who can’t see through an obvious alibi. Stone is clearly using it to make fun of the rich, Benny being in the lower-class role. Yeah she’s a professor and in academia, but she also faked most of her credentials, that’s a point of her character that she’s a traveler and having her here makes a great contrast.
The book itself also has some of Stone’s absolute best prose, giving each chapter a tongue in cheek title referring to one of the great mysteries or one of the great mystery tropes (or cliches if you prefer). The Cat’s Paw is also a really fun character once their identity is revealed with the pulp style of the interludes blending with the more traditional murder mystery pastiche throughout the rest of the novel. There is also a very small, but welcome, cameo from Irving Braxiatel, whom I was almost convinced would be behind some of the goings on, though if that is the case it’s something not revealed in this book. The elements of the book involving ARVID feels like a plan from Irving Braxiatel, but isn’t something that actually happens here with ARVID having a much different duplicitous nature. Overall, Ship of Fools is perhaps the perfect title for a book which is all about a ship full of detectives who really just stumble onto their own solutions. It contains some of Stone’s most accessible, yet most fun, prose and a story which really gives the general audience a good point to get what even the standalone Benny books can do. 9/10.
The story is a sendup of murder mysteries, sending a group of eccentrics into a secluded location and slowly killing them off with the notorious thief, the Cat’s Paw, who has stolen from Krytell Industries CEO, Marcus Krytell. Benny is the first on the list to help get it back and she must don a new persona: Bernice Summersdale, young widow looking for love on the Titanian Queen, and of course trouble follows. There are of course several detectives on the ship, the most important being Emil Dupont, who is apparently the greatest detective in the galaxy, but of course is more of a bumbling idiot while Benny tries to piece things together. There is also a minor character who is a parody of Miss. Marple, Agatha Magpole, a detective who attracted murderers which causes her to wear a headdress to stop that from happening. The bodies eventually drop after Benny gets to the bottom of who the Cat’s Paw is, and why they are not actually the murderer as they’ve never killed anyone. There is just something incredibly fun about this dynamic with Benny being surrounded by people who can’t see through an obvious alibi. Stone is clearly using it to make fun of the rich, Benny being in the lower-class role. Yeah she’s a professor and in academia, but she also faked most of her credentials, that’s a point of her character that she’s a traveler and having her here makes a great contrast.
The book itself also has some of Stone’s absolute best prose, giving each chapter a tongue in cheek title referring to one of the great mysteries or one of the great mystery tropes (or cliches if you prefer). The Cat’s Paw is also a really fun character once their identity is revealed with the pulp style of the interludes blending with the more traditional murder mystery pastiche throughout the rest of the novel. There is also a very small, but welcome, cameo from Irving Braxiatel, whom I was almost convinced would be behind some of the goings on, though if that is the case it’s something not revealed in this book. The elements of the book involving ARVID feels like a plan from Irving Braxiatel, but isn’t something that actually happens here with ARVID having a much different duplicitous nature. Overall, Ship of Fools is perhaps the perfect title for a book which is all about a ship full of detectives who really just stumble onto their own solutions. It contains some of Stone’s most accessible, yet most fun, prose and a story which really gives the general audience a good point to get what even the standalone Benny books can do. 9/10.
August 17, 2025
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/ship-of-fools-by-dave-stone/
this was an interesting paired reading with Freya Marske’s A Restless Truth because it’s also an sfnal murder/crime mystery on a ship; a spaceship this time, with Bernice Summerfield pitted against the assembled wiles of the galaxy’s best / worst detectives to try and solve the identity of the mysterious thief known as the Cat’s Paw. (Who was prefigured in the previous three novels, though I didn’t notice.)
It’s generally funny and witty, and a good parody of the mystery genre with also some decent characterisation of Benny. As one reviewer puts it, Stone is “operating in a league entirely his own, even if nobody – himself included, one suspects – is quite certain exactly what sport he’s actually supposed to be playing.” Could have done without the digs at autism though, which really bring the book down a couple of points for me
this was an interesting paired reading with Freya Marske’s A Restless Truth because it’s also an sfnal murder/crime mystery on a ship; a spaceship this time, with Bernice Summerfield pitted against the assembled wiles of the galaxy’s best / worst detectives to try and solve the identity of the mysterious thief known as the Cat’s Paw. (Who was prefigured in the previous three novels, though I didn’t notice.)
It’s generally funny and witty, and a good parody of the mystery genre with also some decent characterisation of Benny. As one reviewer puts it, Stone is “operating in a league entirely his own, even if nobody – himself included, one suspects – is quite certain exactly what sport he’s actually supposed to be playing.” Could have done without the digs at autism though, which really bring the book down a couple of points for me
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March 8, 2021Un recluso miliardario offre a Benny uno di quei lavori “impossibili da rifiutare”: recuperare un prezioso artefatto che gli è stato rubato dal famigerato Zampa di Gatto. E così la nostra archeologa si ritrova su un’astronave piena di ricconi snob e detective idioti, quando all’improvviso decine e decine di misteriosi omicidi vengono a galla…
È un libro decisamente particolare: la parodia di una parodia di un invito a cena con delitto. Le morti sono così cruente e grottesche che sono impossibili da prendere seriamente, tutti i personaggi sono delle macchiette, specialmente i detective che sono la scimmiottatura di famose controparti letterarie (Emil Dupont = Poirot, Agatha Magpole = Miss Marple, ecc…), uno più inutile dell’altro. Un concentrato di humor nero con un risvolto fantascientifico.
È un libro decisamente particolare: la parodia di una parodia di un invito a cena con delitto. Le morti sono così cruente e grottesche che sono impossibili da prendere seriamente, tutti i personaggi sono delle macchiette, specialmente i detective che sono la scimmiottatura di famose controparti letterarie (Emil Dupont = Poirot, Agatha Magpole = Miss Marple, ecc…), uno più inutile dell’altro. Un concentrato di humor nero con un risvolto fantascientifico.
July 14, 2025
I think England might have run out of printer ink, solely for the overuse of commas in the ongoing, long, forever running, boring as all heck, something, something, paragraphs of pointless description!
I'm at the point where I can't stand Benny. I read these books for the fleeting glimpses into Brax's life.
The story was okay. The execution made me almost wish for an execution.
I'm at the point where I can't stand Benny. I read these books for the fleeting glimpses into Brax's life.
The story was okay. The execution made me almost wish for an execution.
May 19, 2024
This was my first experience with Bennie on her own and it's a fun outing. Nothing stellar, but I enjoyed Stone's Douglas Adams' style sense of humor.
March 19, 2017
I quite enjoyed this one: murder mystery aboard luxury liner (very Orient Express) is always a good start for a plot.
December 14, 2009
I just didn't find it very interesting. But I did read and finish it at my usual rate, so I can't say I 'disliked' it. Cameos by Jason and Braxiatel.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews