bbrassfield 's review for:

Le fantôme de la Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin

3.0

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First off let me say that Valerie Martin does atmosphere very well. Her prose has a nice flow to it, almost like verse at times, and she does a wonderful job in The Ghost of the Mary Celeste of creating a spectral atmosphere. Told from several different character viewpoints, the novel easily sucks the reader in to the point where you really do feel a part of the world the author creates, almost as if you are in the scenes described in the story. The problem,, to my mind anyway, is that there is very little payoff at the conclusion. This might well be an overly simplistic "conclusion" but honestly I just wanted to no more than mere intimations what happened to the wife and child of the doomed Capt. Benjamin Briggs, not to mention the rest of the crew. We are given intimations as I said, but in this case I found them to be unsatisfying. I have no doubt many readers will be quite content with what the author has chosen to reveal. A fun summer read to be sure.