The Sinking Admiral: A Gripping Murder Mystery Set in a Small English Seaside Village

by The Detection Club, Simon Brett (Editor)

The Floating Admiral was the first of the Detection Club’s collaborative novels, in which twelve of its members wrote a single novel. Eighty-five years later, fourteen members of the club have once again collaborated to produce The Sinking Admiral.

‘The Admiral’ is a pub in the Suffolk seaside village of Crabwell, The Admiral Byng. ‘The Admiral’ is also the nickname of its landlord, Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons, as well as the name of the landlord’s dinghy. None of them are as buoyant as they should be, for the pub is threatened with closure due to falling takings.

Tempers are already frayed due to the arrival of a television documentary team when Fitzsimmons is found dead in his tethered boat. The villagers assume a simple case of suicide and fear that their debt-ridden pub will now sink without trace. The journalists seem determined to finish the job by raking up old skeletons, but they weren’t banking on the fact that this story has been written by 14 extremely competitive crime writers – arch bamboozlers who will stop at nothing to save a good pub.

The Sinking Admiral, edited by the Detection Club’s outgoing President – author and broadcaster Simon Brett, OBE – continues a tradition established by the Detection Club’s founders in 1931 when Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts and eleven other esteemed authors wrote The Floating Admiral, a ‘collaborative novel’ to challenge themselves, fox their readers and help to pay for the Club’s running costs. Now, 85 years later, 14 of today’s leading crime writers have repeated this unique game of literary consequences, producing an original, ebullient and archetypal whodunit that will keep readers guessing right up to what crime lovers insist on calling the dénouement…

The contributors to The Sinking Admiral BRETTKATE CHARLESNATASHA COOPERSTELLA DUFFYMARTIN EDWARDSRUTH DUDLEY EDWARDSTIM HEALDMICHAEL JECKSJANET LAURENCEPETER LOVESEYMICHAEL RIDPATHDAVID ROBERTSL.C. TYLERLAURA WILSONall members of The Detection Club.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, British Literature

353 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 16, 2016

About the author

Formed c. 1930, the Detection Club is a group of (mostly British) mystery writers who occasionally write collaborative works.

Presidents:
G.K. Chesterton (1930–1936)
E. C. Bentley (1936–1949)
Dorothy L. Sayers (1949–1957)
Agatha Christie (1957–1976)
Lord Gorell (1957–1963)
Julian Symons (1976–1985)
H. R. F. Keating (1985–2000)
Simon Brett (2000–2015)
Martin Edwards (2015–)

Past members include: Anthony Berkeley, G.D.H. Cole, Margaret Cole, Freeman Wills Croft, Clemence Dane , Edgar Jepson, Milward Kennedy, Ronald Knox, John Rhode, Henry Wade, Victor L. Whitechurch, Gladys Mitchell, E.C.R. Lorac and Helen de Guerry Simpson

Reviews

[Shauna · Rating 2 out of 5]

The biggest mystery here is how so many accomplished authors managed to create such a puerile, self-indulgent , misogynistic piece of work .

[Judy]

I decided to read this modern take on a round-robin detective story after reading The Floating Admiral, published in 1931. I have now given up on this one after reading more than half of it - after liking the start, I increasingly found I wasn't enjoying it and felt it didn't hang together. I also felt some of the characters were rather cliched and stereotyped, and the weaving in of a lengthy pastiche of a Dan Brown-type book was the last straw for me! A shame as there are some great writers involved.

[Stefan Bostock · Rating 1 out of 5]

Right.. you better strap in...

Despite always trying not to, I accidentally read a review of this book on Goodreads before starting it. All I saw was “puerile and misogynistic’… and I have to say… they absolutely nailed it. However, rather than just put it down, I actually powered through it remarkably quickly… sitting next to me while reading it must have been a nightmare due to all the laughs, teeth-sucking, and “wait… wait… hold on… I have to read you this”.

I have so many comments, I’m going to have to bullet point them to save on time:

- First of all, I want to thank whoever borrowed it from Edinburgh Central Library before me and annotated it with corrections to errors in continuity or just facts; leaving on the final page a succinct “INADEQUATELY EDITED”. This was an excellent addition to the experience, although in any other circumstance I would be a bit of a square and be against the defacing of library books. My favourite edit was when they were describing watching the sunset shimmering over the sea, and next to it was simply “NOT IN EAST FACING SUFFOLK”. Which pleased me greatly as I’m very location and orientation minded when reading (I appreciate this may be a little niche).

- Secondly, I wanted to criticise it as being a testament to not writing a book by committee (and draw some kind of parallel to the AAA games industry), but actually, it didn’t feel like it was written by a committee at all, but a series of somewhat discordant and surprisingly irrelevant perspectives, through which the only themes were sexism, alcoholism, and everyone just being kind of a dick.

- …what it IS a testament to, is the importance of having a single likeable or sympathetic character… my previous read was about a young man who brutally hacked to death an entire family… father, daughter, and infant… and he was much more endearing than anyone in this book.

- But let’s move on the the big jiggly elephant in the room… every female character was a poorly duct-taped-together mishmash of cliche, cleavage and calamity… while also somehow being acerbic and unsympathetic. Whereas, every man, regardless of how much of an old soak, cold career-driven narcissist, or manipulative sleaze-bag their actions were described as being… had a heart of gold, a twinkle in their eye, and would be a safe cosy Suffolk-harbour in a storm.

- ….on that note… It made me realise that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the word ‘boobs’ actually written in a book before… so maybe I’m just sheltered I guess.

- One of my favourite moments was about half way through when stopping for the umpteenth time to read out a line to my partner… and her stating “well… I bet it’d be interesting to know which Chapters were written by men”… half of the dastardly dozen are women… and every chapter is the same… in fact… perhaps the most impressive thing about the whole affair is the relatively consistent tone throughout…

- …and look… I don’t want to be called a hypocrite or anything… but beyond the bizarre horniness of everyone washing about this village… the only thing they take more seriously than their libidos… is their liquid lunches. We get remarkably and unnecessarily in-depth descriptions of drinks (considering the degree of detail in all other areas)… and we’re never more than a page-or-so away from one of them. It reads like the authors are using the writing of the book as a distraction during a much-needed Dry January… and in fact… thats not a bad idea!

- Now for a couple of more specific complaints…

- …its not clever to try and break the fourth wall, or do a thing like a dream sequence and then refer to it as a lazy writing device with a little wink… YOU have not earned this… and the reference to ‘like an Agatha Christie novel’ is almost sacrilegious, especially given the providence of the Club (and how much they’ve drunk out on her dime).

- I don’t think its wildly appropriate for a teacher to refer to a ‘troubled teen’ in her class as a strumpet, harlot, tramp (the actual terms were worse… think…. ‘receptacle’). As much as i’m sure theres kernels of truth in some of these relationships… this is not hard hitting social realism… its cosy-crime framed in 1970s sitcom innuendo pastiche… with none of the cosy, com, charm, and barely any crime…

- …and on that… the ‘com’ bit I mean… look… I’ve been to that bit of the world… and in fact I’m heading back that way in a few days… and I get it… it can be pretty bleak… but if that’s the bar out there for witty, whimsical or groin-moistening banter… then we should just cast East Anglia out into the North Sea and wish it the best of luck wherever it washes up… because it can’t make things worse.

- …and sure, I’m going to quote a TV show in a book review… but the wheels clearly came off a while ago, so why not… every time the main characters we’re flirting… or being snide to each other… or whatever… all I could thing of was Dennis Reynolds in IASIP (S09E03 in case anyone cares) shouting at Dee and Mac trying to flirt: “What are you doing?! This isn't "will they or won't they?" This is "I know they won't, and I know I don't want them to!”

- Finally… this seems almost petty now really… but nothing really happens for 300 pages… which is probably the most unforgivable crime a book can commit (unless you’re gunning for literary praise of course… but that for sure doesn’t seem like the case here).ow they won't, and I know I don't want them to!


BRIEF SPOILER ALERT… but if you’ve got this far, you’re not going to be reading this book for the plot now are you…


- I do NOT believe the motivation… who gives a sh!t?!.. A teacher having had an illegitimate child thirty-odd years ago… why would anyone care?… as far as my experience goes… its almost par for course in the profession (that’s not a jab at teachers… you’re doing great work (probably)… just my own life experience).

- I do NOT believe that a spouse would react that casually to finding out that their partner had brutally murdered two people.

- I do NOT believe that the adoptive mother of the victims son (and they all like each other mind you… and are nice), would watch the victim get killed and then just not tell anyone… for no discernible reason… despite the acknowledgement of the small-village-bush-telegraph.

- I do NOT believe a strong independent needs-no-man bartender who has been taken in by a older gentleman at her lowest moment, literally clothed by him, and provided a job by him… would then spend most of her time thinking about how all she wants to do is hate f*$k some washed up TV personality that’s only just sauntered through the door after finding her patron murdered… in fact… no one ever seemed to care about anyone being alive or dead… they all went to a funeral… found a (different) murdered man in the open grave… but then couldn’t (literally) dash off fast enough to wet their whistles at the wake.


I genuinely felt a little bad about writing a bad review (which... I guess this is) as I DO like the idea of the Detection Club, and people’s literary enthusiasm generally, but hey, these are writers with QUITE the number of accolades and successes, so I’m sure they’ll be fine. In fact, how something like this was written by a single published author, let alone a collection of very successful authors is baffling.

Maybe it’s like the Bullingdon Club… it’s had its day… I’m sure it was fun and a load of port was drunk… but at a certain point you lost touch with reality and we’re embarrassed by you, your inappropriate comments, and your even less appropriate ‘sexcapades’… you should all just disperse and get real jobs… or don’t… but don’t expose us to your nonsense anymore.

Well… that’s by far my longest ever review… so maybe it is worth a read!

I certainly needed to write THIS is seems…

…the exorcism is complete. I can now rest…

[Mercedes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great concept continuing the precedent of having some of the best crime writers of the day collaborate and write different chapters of a book, previous writers were people like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. This is a modern version with modern crime writers. Extremely well edited so it works listened to as an audio book, great narrator- very enjoyable murder mystery.

[E · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh. I'm not sure why I even finished this book. Probably out of some strange loyalty to the original Club, its members, and the old original project. Don't waste your time.
And also - why so much casual sexism and rampant misogyny? Completely gratuitous.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this one. It got off to a good start but some chapters were a bit clunky and I sometimes felt there were slight continuity errors or confusing slight changes of personalities as the story progressed.

It was an interesting exercise in melding the different writing styles into a plot that held together but this element of a game between the writers meant the story lacked any depth.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good read - kept me guessing to the end

[Dunc · Rating 1 out of 5]

Right. I just finished so I can give some first impressions.

First off, this is from 2016. So the general misogyny and sexism is weird. Like taken completely at face value, without there being any reason for it. The number of times the female characters bodies are described is strange. Including an underage girl guide. It was uncomfortable and had no bearing on the plot.

The book constantly made self referential comments about crime writing in general that felt like it was an inside joke for the authors rather than for the audience's benefit.

I didn't find it all that compelling, which is sad because I loved the idea of 'the detection club' as described in 'the floating admiral'. I do think the style of the editor being asked to weave together different sub plots each written by a different author just wasn't really working. That's not to say that they shouldn't keep it up! I think the idea of a collectively written mystery is super fun.

The little town of Crabwell was probably my favourite character out of them all. In my mind it was basically Boscastle with a beach and that made it a particularly vivid world. At the beginning I liked Amy, but like the rest of the characters she too fell flat pretty quickly.

I would say pass on this one, but I'm going to check out the original detection club novel where each other did a chapter, passing on their proposed conclusion to the author of the final chapter. That does sound like the best way to do this!

[Steve Cann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book as a present, and it made for an intriguing surprise when I saw the nature of its conception - updating the idea of the ‘Detection Club’ with a pool of modern authors.
With the knowledge then that a different author had written at least one chapter, it made for an interesting exercise to see how this idea would work in practise.

It made for quite a jaunty story - a murder/mystery set at a quiet English seaside village, revolving around the village’s ailing pub - and the film company making a documentary about the pub, who find they have more material for their programme than they at first imagined!

The story unfolds slowly and carefully, each writer presumably teeing-up events for the next writer to develop.
There’s quite a large cast of characters - this helps though to spread the net quite wide as we speculate on who the murderer might turn out to be.

It made for an enjoyable but unremarkable read - the conclusion perhaps being surprising, but not the big twist maybe that the reader was hoping for.

All in all though, it’s a neat story and successful exercise in combining the talents of different authors into an intriguing melting pot.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This turned out to be less interesting than I anticipated, given that I have read and enjoyed the works of most of the collaborators. If you are the sort of reader who likes to spot literary references and who aims to identify who wrote which chapter then you will enjoy this. If you are looking for good classic detection then it is less of a joy.There are not many clues. There is a lot about the characters, but most of it is not that interesting or relevant.

All the writers involved in the Detection Club's "The Floating Admiral" (1931), have an eponymous character and some other famous GAD writers also appear. The professional policemen are outwitted by the amateur bar manager, Amy Walpole, and the suspects are all gathered in the final chapter for the denouement, which is rather feeble.

All in all, this was a bit of a slog.

[Todayiamadaisy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I rarely give a book one star, because I've become quite good at stopping a book halfway through if I'm not enjoying it, thus weeding out the one star candidates. Not this time, though: even though I didn't like it, something made me keep going. Pure self-flagellation.

This is a story compiled by a group of authors who each took a couple of chapters, and it really shows. The characters are cardboard cut-outs with a variety of unpleasant tics and ages that seem to change from chapter to chapter, the setting is dreary, the book contradicts itself from page to page, and the murderer's motive is unbelievable. Towards the end, there's a meta section in which the characters talk about the rules of detective novels, and maybe — maybe — if the whole book had been that self-aware, it might have been redeemed. I hope the authors' individual novels are better than this.

[Anna Lord · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel does not sink or swim according to the weight of its whodunnit-ness but because it seamlessly segues 14 separate authors into one voice. No mean literary achievement! While reading, I couldn't help comparing it to its long-ago sister book, The Floating Admiral. The detective novel has greatly changed since the first offing. The earlier book featured lots of clue-gathering and deductive thinking. This one was character driven. The former is more cerebral. The latter is like daytime TV.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. A retired admiral is murdered and found floating in a boat on the river. The suspects are his niece, Elma, her fiancé, Holland, her missing brother, Walter, the admiral’s former navy men, Ware and Denny, and the vicar. There is much talk about tides (yawn) some old shenanigans in China before WWI (confusing), an inheritance for Elma and Walter and the vicar’s mysteriously missing wife. In the end, we learn that the missing nephew, Walter, is impersonating the newspaper reporter covering the murder. He was in town to try to collect his inheritance from his uncle. To get his uncle to agree, he tells the truth about the China affair, that it was his old navy buddy, Denny, who betrayed the Admiral. The Admiral is furious and goes to Denny’s house that very night to confront him. Denny says that the Admiral was killed in self defense but we don’t really know as there was no witness. This book was a slog. While it is an interesting concept to have famous mystery authors collaborate on a novel, each writing a chapter without knowing the outcome in advance, it doesn’t really work in reality. The story is disjointed and quite boring at times. The chapters by Dorothy Sayers and Ronald Knox were especially painful. Knox did little more than summarize the preceding chapters with 39 enumerated points! Seriously! It was like he couldn’t make sense of what the preceding authors had written so he had to order his own thoughts by writing the points down and then decided that was enough for his part. So repetitive and unnecessary! The draw to the novel, besides the famous mystery authors collaborating, was that they all gave their own theories of the solution, which were presumably the one that they were writing toward when they wrote their own chapters. I honestly stopped reading them because they were so convoluted and ridiculous. One even wrote some far fetched gun running trade with China. Please! This book did make me appreciate Ms. Christie all the more, however, as her chapter was not only the shortest, most concise and organized but her solution was also the most interesting. I would have liked to read her book instead. I don’t think that I will bother with any further Detective Club books, although I do wonder if this club gave Ms. Christie the idea for the short stories that she wrote featuring Miss Marple and the Tuesday Night Club.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

" 'The Admiral' is a pub in the Suffolk seaside village of Crabwell. The Admiral Byng. 'The Admiral' is also the nickname of its landlord, Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons, as well as the name of the landlord's dinghy. None of them are as buoyant as they should be, for the pub is threatened with closure due to falling takings.

"Tempers are already frayed thanks to the arrival of a television documentary team when Fitzsimmons is found dead in his tethered boat. The villagers assume a simple case of suicide and fear that their debt-ridden pub will now sink without trace. The journalists seem determined to finish the job by raking up old skeletons, but they weren't banking on the fact that this story has been written by 14 extremely competitive crime writers -- arch bamboozlers who will stop at nothing to save a good pub."
~~front flap

14 bamboozlers. That should have made for a stellar book. But instead, the book seemed to lose steam and wander around in circles in the middle. I stuck it out until page 179, but as I kept falling asleep over it after only a few pages, I decided this one just wasn't my cuppa.

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointment. I enjoyed the original collaborative novel by the Detection Club, The Floating Admiral, and had high hopes for this modern homage, but it didn’t achieve. This was written using a different approach to the Floating Admiral (in which each participating member of The Detection Club wrote a chapter each), with different authors writing each sub-plot and each part being weaved into the novel as appropriate. It’s lead to a disjointed novel, with little flow, several continuity errors, and a range of underdeveloped and unlikeable characters. The two detectives in particular are dreadful caricatures. Simon Brett’s introduction points out that because the crime genre has developed into so many different sub-genres, it wasn’t possible to write The Sinking Admiral in the same way as The Floating Admiral. Based on this evidence, I would go further, and suggest it just simply isn’t possible.

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on an original idea by the Detection Club from the Golden Age of Crime their modern day contemparies attempt a round robin detective story and they pull it off in style. The plot is set in Suffolk at the Admiral Byng pub owned by Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons who allowed television to film a reality documentary. However Fitzsimmons (known as Fitz) is found murdered on his boat bar manager Amy Warple and television presenter Ben Milne form an unlikely partnership as they set about solving the murder. In my opinion the book runs far smoother than the original with the group working more as a team and not adding clues that make the job more difficult. This a must read for fans of the genre with plenty of 'in jokes' to keep the reader amused.

[Sinta · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stopped reading at Chapter 5 when a teenager who seems to be a background character and whom we as a reader have not been formally introduced yet at that time was described "all her instincts were telling her to polish up her charms and display them as clearly as she could until a suitable sperm donor picked her as his chosen recepticle". What the fuck?? Is this relevant? I didn't care to find out. At this point I was already feeling like this book wasn't for me but I had DNFed the last book so I thought I'd push through in case it gets better and I was just being picky. This passage makes me think that it indeed will not get better and that being picky is good, if it means I can spend my precious time on something I'm not actively waiting to be over.

[Oka Kartika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first time learning about The Detection Club, and it’s such a cool concept for a crime fiction lover like me. The book is written by fourteen crime writers, each contributing their own area of expertise like economics, psychology, finance, and more. I found myself especially curious about the collaborative process behind it, that is the thinking, blending, and finalizing of ideas. There’s that saying, "too many cooks spoil the broth”, but this book clearly proves otherwise. Instead of diluting the story, the collaboration enriches it, and it never feels like it was written by multiple authors. The Sinking Admiral is a light, enjoyable whodunit—perfect not only for younger readers, but also a fun read for someone in their mid-thirties like me.

[Donna Carver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting....a group of mystery writers are each given a character and the murder situation, then they write their chapters. Another set of writers works on transitions and the solution to the murder! These writers have restarted the Detection Club, which originated in the 30s. Although it is easy to see the different writers' work, the story flows....and I didn't solve the mystery early! A fast, fun read!

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit jarring, which considering this was written round-robin style, makes sense. It seems that the selection of contributing authors' styles didn't really mesh well with each other. The conclusion, while probable, seemed to be a bit cobbled together.
The audiobook was fine, if a bit inconsistent for some characters, although that might be related to the writing itself.
2.5 stars rounded up

[Pranit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surprisingly a really bad ending to a story that kept building up throughout the pages! 🛟

The two stars are only for the efforts and inserting the authors from the original Detection Club members 🕵️‍♀️

Without giving spoilers, the reason for committing murders seem to pale against the gruesome manner in which they were committed! 🔪

[Carolina Imhof · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got the audiobook and it was very well read and the story was entertaining, although the resolution didn't seem completely satisfactory. The only problem was the long, long foreword, that you can't easily skip.

[Irfan Nurhadi · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are so many unanswered questions that are left aside. The mystery and the solution are okay, I guess. One thing that stood out for me was the funeral chapter! If you're an avid fan of detective fiction, especially GAD novels, you'll laugh your a** off! xD

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A large cast of characters in this little seaside town in the UK...a bit Agatha Christie, but nevertheless worth a read.

[Jawahar Surti · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

First Chapter OK. 2nd chapter was the most boring and felt I may not complete the book. But decided to read Ch 3. Then on it was interesting and gripping to the end...

[nikobran · Rating 2 out of 5]

boring. worst ending i have ever encounter

[Kirstine Lindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good read. 🫶🏼✨

[Destiny · Rating 1 out of 5]

First half was okay but then dirty content was introduced. Lost the classic / cozy mystery feel for me. :( Didn’t finish.

[Jacquie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as the first imo. It felt untidy in sections. More obvious the different writers speaking and it moved too quickly without a strong base.

[David Malmberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A golden age collaborative murder mystery.

Very enjoyable! Brought back fond memories of mysteries from the 1930s. Similar to the Floating Admiral by Agatha Christelman, et. al.