DEEP WATER

Newlywed sailors find peril on a remote island.

This thriller opens in the middle of the Indian Ocean with the rescue of Virginie and Jake, a young British couple, from a yacht that isn’t theirs by a Malaysian navy ship that picked up their distress signal. Jake is severely injured, and as the crew heads for the nearest shore to take him to a hospital, Virginie pieces together the narrative for the ship’s captain, Danial Tengku. The novel then flashes back to the couple flying into Malaysia after having spent their life savings on an older yacht with the goal of restoring the vessel and spending a year traveling. After an older sailor tells them about a remote, little-known island, the couple change their plans on a whim; when they arrive at Amarante, they make friends with the occupants of the two other boats spending time there until monsoon season—a Canadian couple and a single Australian man. Vitor, an unnerving older man, and his much younger companion, Teresa, arrive soon afterward, and everyone agrees to island rules of sharing fishing and cooking duties. Over the next few weeks, tensions begin to rise among the couples on the island when Jake and Virginie’s engine breaks and Vitor’s offers of assistance clearly come with strings attached. Bamford’s debut novel reflects her knowledge of sailing and life in remote areas, and the cast of characters and dark-paradise theme suit the genre well. The central narrative builds too slowly to maintain suspense, though, especially regarding Virginie’s naïveté toward Vitor’s advances, and the framing device of the otherwise-unrelated Capt. Tengku’s internal monologue doesn’t quite hold the novel together. Still, fans of sailing and deserted-island stories might find an intriguing tale here.

An overflowing but unpolished story.