Cruise formal dining has deadly drawbacks

Self Service restaurant

If you have booked the cruise with a set dining time and an agreement to share with up to six other passengers then you will be sitting down to dinner every night with those six individuals. Your only escape is to pass on the formal waiter served five-course dinner in the main restaurant and pay to eat at one of several extra dining restaurants or go to eat in the self-service restaurants onboard which are free.

My character Luke and his wife Margaret booked an early dinner at 6.30 pm with six complete strangers. Their cruise duration was fifty nights. Can you imagine just how stressful that could have been if nobody got along or nobody made an effort at conversing over the interminable five-course meal each night?

I have sat and watched such a table of four who sat facing each other, in complete silence, night after night.  The two couples didn’t even bother to talk to each other much less the pair who sat stony-faced opposite them! Each night they sat in perfect silence for two hours before rising and going their separate ways.

We booked a table for four on our first cruise and sat there at 6.25 pm looking at our watches and the empty seats opposite us. Who would they be and what type of life have they lived were just two of many questions bubbling around our minds as we waited. Would they be young or old?  experienced cruisers or a couple taking their first cruise? As the minute's ticked by we gradually began to realise that there was no other couple. So for the rest of that cruise, we sat down every night with our absent partner’s empty seats opposite us.

If you booked a table for two you could just find your own conversation drying up after 50 nights. Often the table for two’s is located close to other tables for two’s so there is every chance that you’ll spark up conversations with other couples in the same predicament. 

Read more about life onboard a modern cruise ship in “Murder On Board” (available on pre-order from 5th February 2019). This is my latest novel. The ship left the harbour with 2,899 souls for a 50-day cruise but will be returning with significantly less. 

Could it be because the average age of the passengers is 73 and shit happens, old people die? 

Maybe it's because the ship is sailing 1,000 miles up the Amazon River with its precious cargo of geriatric guests placing them in an area of 100% humidity?

Or maybe it's because the Amazon River is home to the Zeka virus and the ship is sailing towards millions of female mosquitoes just waiting to attack its passengers?

Or is it simply because a killer is loose amongst them?  


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