Murder On Board

I really must log into Goodreads more as I have just come across this readers review for Murder On Board. Anthony summarised my story far better than I myself have!

Anthony Yvonnica rated it it was amazing

One of the best books I have ever read! The book was a diary of a 50-day cruise. I "L-O-V-E-D" the author's style:

Today we played bridge. Then we had tea. Later I killed a guy. Then we sat and listened to the violinist. Dinner was excellent, especially the lamb.

I have been on cruises and I despise people who stop. When walking through a narrow crowded corridor and the people in front of you just stop walking...... They would be on my list. The lady who is seated with us at dinner, and she sits too close and won't stop yabbering about nothing .... she would be on my list. The author of this book finally dealt with "those" people.

Now the author didn't kill anybody. He simply took a cruise. I'm sure the book stemmed from his thinking how much better his day would be if the woman who reached bare-handed into the buffet food somehow found herself properly chastised.

The book was excellent. I wish I were friends with the author. (less)

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Click here to buy a copy - currently £2.99 for 269 pages of travel, murder and humour.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) the pandemic that stopped the cruise industry in its tracks

I've been taking cruise holidays for many years now and there have always been viruses onboard ships. I've travelled on P&O Cruises and TUI / Marella Cruises and each line takes its responsibilities seriously. It's not unusual, anytime in the past five years to encounter the ships stewards and room staff disinfecting handrails, providing hand sanitizers in the buffet and restaurant entrances. Tissues are often available to open toilet doors and a bin waiting outside to deposit the used tissue in.

The most common bug that occurred was the Novovirus which appeared to break out on every other ship I travelled on. It is also called the winter vomiting bug. It is the most common form of gastroenteritis infection and is characterized by non-bloody diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach pain. Fever or headaches may also be experienced. It normally lasts for between one and three days but given the large number of older passengers board with underlying medical conditions it often took many days longer for those people to recover.  All persons with an illness are confined to their cabin and meals are brought to them until they recover. Ships have medical centres and a ships doctor so the stricken passengers probably visited the centre when they first became ill.

What can also spread illness is the air conditioning systems which transfers air around the ship, particularly to those passengers occupying the inside cabins which by their location do not have windows. Many exterior cabins do have windows but there are not capable of being opened and so they depend on the air conditioning system too.

I last cruised in January this year and was safely home when the stories of cruise ships being refused permission to dock because of the Covid-19 outbreak on board began to circulate. However, what people forget is that many other cruise ships were at sea at that time and had no cases of Covad-19 and safely completed their journeys. The focus tends to be on the bad news stories.

Deaths do occur on cruises as death is just part of life. No one knows when their time will come and people can die for many different reasons other than the coronavirus. However, it is not unknown for passengers to have booked the cruise a year in advance of departure and to join the ship even if they have developed serious medical conditions in the intervening period.

A little known fact is that there are morgues onboard cruise ships and most ships of c70,000 tons and upwards carry morgues capable of holding five or more bodies.

Murder On Board, my book tells the story of deaths on a modern cruise ship for reasons other than the coronavirus. The story follows the action of a murdering pensioner whose driven to actions he may live to regret.

Pick up a copy and join him on his cruise of a lifetime across the Atlantic ocean to the Caribbean islands, the USA and South America. Join him in the Amazon and on a small canoe making his way through the rainforests. Join him as he steps down the plank at every port wondering if he'll be handcuffed on  his return.

Murder On Board - online purchases

Click here for the US Kindle version 

Click here for the UK Kindle version

Click here for the US Paperback version

Click here for the UK Paperback version

Murder On Board opens your eyes to life onboard modern cruise ships

I wrote Murder On Board, a chapter a day because I wanted the reader to experience the whole sensation of cruising as much as I wanted them to understand what motivated our newly retired pensioner to murder fellow passengers and crew.

People said to me you can't write for both audiences, crime and travel simultaneously but I thought I could and you can read my efforts in Murder On Board.

• I mean who hasn't been curious about taking a cruise to the other side of the world? 
• I mean, aren't the seas bouncing the boat about a lot? 
• Aren't the days at sea boring with nothing to do?
• Isn't the food bland and just a buffet? 
• No one dresses up for dinner anymore, do they?
• And when you get to where you are going you're lucky if they let you go ashore?
• And aren't the excursions extortionately expensive? 

No, no, no, no, no and yes if you take a cruise line organised excursion.

I knew nothing about cruising until 2014 when we experienced our first one and I loved it! I loved the whole experience, particularly the bit that says "the world is brought to you". Wake up today in Venice and tomorrow look out the window and its Dubrovnik outside! The next day its Porto.

I also loved the unpack once. You can holiday all around the Canary Islands or the Azores and then enjoy a few days in the Caribbean before flying home. Fourteen days of golden memories stored away to revisit, at your leisure.

So I  sat down after the most jaw-dropping fifty-day cruise that took in the Azores, the Caribbean, the USA, Mexico and the Canary Islands on the way home, and wrote for days. I hope you will give it a read. It's free currently on Kindle Unlimited and only £2.99 to buy on Amazon so dip your foot in the water and find out what happens on a cruise.


Murder On Board - online purchases

Click here for the US Kindle version 

Click here for the UK Kindle version

Click here for the US Paperback version

Click here for the UK Paperback version

Seeking a Christmas book that takes you around the world?

Mark Rice's latest fun travel/murder mystery story.  Take a five-star journey 

Christmas gift of a quirky travel cum murder tale that takes you from Southampton to the Amazon and back, if you survive the cruise!

Murder On Board - online purchases

Click here for the US Kindle version 

Click here for the UK Kindle version

Click here for the US Paperback version

Click here for the UK Paperback version

Murder On Board now in the County Wexford shops

I'm just back from a Wexford Local Author's night of readings in the Red Book Shop in
Selskin House, St Peter's Square, Slippery Green, Wexford, Y35 ER2F  in Wexford town. It was an epic night with no less than fourteen authors attending! They covered so many different genres of writing that there was something for everyone.

Wexford Local Authors at the Red Book Shop 

From poetry to biographies, crime, musical history, local history, exercise books for MS sufferers, collections of short stories, readings from scripts. The shop was bulging with readers and they sat for almost two hours as they were bombarded with words.

My extract that was the second last reading of the night was extremely well received and I loved to hear the laughter, at the right moments! Murder In Maspalomas is the opposite of a dark, menacing read. I wrote it so that the humour and the drama of the story went hand in hand.

Mark Rice reading from Murder In Maspalomas

What starts as a story of how someone tries to make a legitimate buck by importing from China the kid's number 1 Christmas toy for that year, becomes a terrifying game of hide and seek as an unwitting couple ae pursued by a bunch of violent drug gangsters seeking to collect on a debt.

Murder In Maspalomas 

Murder In Maspalomas 
There are copies to buy in the Red Book Shop and the Book Centre in
Wexford Town

Murder In Maspalomas - online purchases
Click here for the UK Kindle version
Click here for the US Kindle version
Click here for the UK Paperback version
Click here for the US Paperback version

Murder On Board

Luke's previous cruise experiences have left him battered and bruised. This time it's going to be different. No more rolling over and just taking the crap. No more instances where he becomes a human doormat. No more bottling it up. No more saying and doing nothing. Luke is a different man, only nobody knows it..................yet.

Murder On Board
There are copies to buy in the Red Book Shop and the Book Centre in
Wexford Town

Murder On Board - online purchases
Click here for the US Kindle version 

Click here for the UK Kindle version

Click here for the US Paperback version

Click here for the UK Paperback version

A day at sea

Today was another sunny, cloudy, sunny day on the windy decks of our ship. 

Sitting on the sun lounger I listen to the waves breaking across the ship’s bow and felt the steady reassuring hum of the ships five engines that vibrate the metal of the promenade deck itself. In the distance the sun shimmers on the rippling deep blue waves until it slips temporarily behind a cloud. Moments later it reappears, as strong and bright as before. Cruising along at 20 knots, the raging wind rocks the blue towels back and forth on the empty loungers threatening to sweep them clean over the rails and far out to sea.

To my right sit row upon row of pale white-skinned fellow passengers, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses that look unseeingly into the middle distance. White thin wires run to their ears from the phones lying on their laps, relaying presumably music or audiobooks or both. Heads are generally protected by tipped caps.

Snatches of conversation drift my way on the breeze.

“Thou better put thine lotion on Harold” spoke one caring Northern lass “less ye be a beetroot by teatime.”

Listening to the conversations of others is something I shamelessly do and on this cruise, the accents are predominantly from the North of England, Liverpool, Manchester, Crewe and Hull. I just love the range of accents and colloquialisms. “All right me chuck?”, “Can I help you mi-duck”, “You aren’t half daft” to quote just a few.  

I feel the heat on my naked bare arms and legs so I whip out the sun lotion factor 50 and generously spread it on my limbs. The lotion glistens on my skin before sinking into the freckled cells. The wind catches the upper left corner of this page flapping it back and forth as I write.

Book signing in Wexford towns Book Centre

I dropped into one of my favourite book shops in Wexford Town and signed some copies of my two crime novels. So if anyone wants an entertaining page-turning read then you need look no further. The Book Centre is just doors away from Boots and Pennys/ Primark.

If you want a Kindle copy of either book click o the links below and if you live further afield then click on the links below for a paperback copy.


Click here for the US Kindle version 

Click here for the UK Kindle version

Click here for the US Paperback version

Click here for the UK Paperback version