First murder, then pirates

Steve Goble gives us a locked room mystery aboard ship in 1723 in The Devil’s Wind, the second installment of his Spider John series of pirate mysteries.

Spider John, a ship’s carpenter, was a reluctant pirate in The Bloody Black Flag. Now on the lam from the British for piracy, he’s aboard the ship Redemption headed for Boston, his wife Em and his son. Or so he hopes, for a British ship is escorting his ship and others, and he recognizes at least one pirate aboard the Redemption. So he expects trouble and soon gets it.

The ship’s captain is found shot to death in his locked cabin, an apparent suicide. Not smelling gunpowder, John is immediately suspicious, And the captain’s daughter, one of two young women aboard the ship, insists her father would have never killed himself. But how could it have been anything but suicide?

It’s a delicious puzzle, but before John can put his mind to it, he makes the mistake of getting drunk. And then the pirates strike.

So Goble gives us both a good pirate adventure and a good mystery, one only Spider John can solve. Or at least the howdunnit part of it. Readers may find themselves a step ahead of John in the whodunnit part.