Book Review: Distress Signals

After having read Catherine Ryan Howard's The Nothing Man, I couldn't help but not read her 2017 debut Distress Signals. In what's a solid first novel, Adam Dunne's girlfriend Sarah, who works at a recruitment agency, leaves Cork for a business trip to Barcelona, only to vanish mysteriously and never to return. Dunne, on the cusp of landing a major screenwriting position in a Hollywood film, is devastated but finds his life thrown off its axis when new revelations connect Sarah to a cruise ship and the disappearance of another woman called Estelle aboard the same ship an year ago. Tackling themes of cruise ship crimes committed in international waters and maritime law, Ryan Howard crafts a taut suspenser that's high on tension, even as it adroitly interesects with a separate storyline about a Frenchman and his troubled childhood. The mystery is as gripping as its payoff, and the unguessable finale is sure to blindside readers. Not to be missed!