The breezy Robert McGinnis (so say several online sources) cover art of a femme fatale sexily shedding a commander’s jacket belies the fact that Peter Baker’s 1967 novel Cruise is a deadly serious ensemble drama featuring seriously flawed characters that wear on the nerves from the moment they board. It’s only a rule of thumb that you must create a likeable character or two for your novel, but only the best writers can ignore it and succeed. Lolita, Gone Girl, and American Psycho might be examples. Baker is no Nabokov or Ellis, and when writers of lesser ability break rules of thumb they can break entire books. You won’t quite want the 33,500 ton cruise ship Queen Dee to sink, but you’ll wish a few people tumbled overboard.
Baker is actually a better writer than many. And his characters aren’t accidentally intolerable—there was a plan: Highsmithesque portraiture of upper class discontent and relational disfunction. His most palatable creations are Pamela Westcott and her son Richard, thirty-eight and eighteen respectively, widow and naïf, both seeking something they can’t quite define among more resolute and worldly passengers, on a Mediterranean pleasure voyage from Southampton to Beirut and back. Pamela hooks up with Chief Officer David Welch (who’s so terrible that for pleasure he brutally beats a hippie stowaway), while Richard has, first, a gay flirtation with an American theater student, then a crush on a French beauty named Simone, then a fling with a rich older lady.
Most of the action is aboard ship, but some of it happens in the ports of call—Southampton, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Athens, Izmir, Beirut, Rhodes, Naples—in that order. That would have been a scintillating real-life cruise at the time, but as a piece of fiction, the selfish, mean, and entitled passengers give the book the feel of a seagoing season of The White Lotus sans humor. Yet after a slow and taxing start, a funny thing happens on the way across the Med—the story starts to click, but only in pieces. By the end we were invested in learning how it all would turn out because the characters of Pamela, Richard, and his crush John grew on us.
We’d wager that Cruise is probably too ponderous for most readers. About one third of its omniscient interior musings could have been jettisoned. Patience is often rewarded in fiction. But time is precious. For those not impressed by its story the book may still have value—and that would be as travelogue. It’s enjoyably detailed on that score. If you’ve visited any of Queen Dee‘s stops you’ll be fascinated by Baker’s depiction of them from a lifetime ago. Maybe that isn’t the strongest endorsement for a novel, but it’s something. Baker is a good writer without an innate sense of conciseness, nor an editor cruel enough to do the job for him. But we’re glad to have gone on the trip.
people must pay them, yet the rich and powerful somehow always manage to avoid their fair share, even when they’ve generated their loot through illegal or even genocidal means. As with many morally rudderless institutions and people, what Swiss banks do is perfectly legal, but “perfectly legal” is the phrase uttered by people who know they’re willfully engaged in behavior that obviously should be illegal—and in fact is illegal for everyone but the rich and connected.
came out of jail not disgraced and shunned, but welcomed, feted, and once again demanding and receiving VIP treatment, the best tables in the best restaurants, and the ear of the global elite. He threw a few coins to charity along the way to spit-shine his reputation, had his thriving conglomerate Talaat Moustafa Group donate some COVID vaccines, but still he’s a murderer who wriggled loose from the hangman’s noose, and today enjoys every privilege he ever enjoyed—while his victim is dead forever.
Must dodge hook.
Must dodge hook. Must dodge hook.
Really must dodge hook!
Must dodge hook! Must dodge hook!
Oww! Motherfuck me!
Anyone got more shoe polish? Lebanese Brown if you have it. I ran out before I finished my ears.
The irony is he told me he’d learned he was being racist and came up here to wash it off in the bath. Ten more minutes and there’d have been no justification for this.
I can hit anything with this pistol.
Including d-flat. Here, listen. Isn’t that cool?
Wait until you hear Miss Tomoni sing, Mr. Stonefeller. This will blow your mind. She’s considered the Bob Dylan of Tokyo because of her incisive and politically relevant lyrics.
You’re right, she’s amazing. And though I’m blind, and technically shouldn’t be able to see her, I also find it incredible how she changes costumes multiple times mid-song like that.
Oh, that’s nothing. The midnight show she goes full frontal. Maybe your off-and-on vision will be on around then.
Room service, sir. You ordered two duck dinners?
Gotta run! Hope you die! Go vegan! You can leave my tip on the nightstand!
Hi! Commercial Girl here. You haven’t 
to David that she did her act for him alone. She even sat on his lap. The patrons objected to her performing for just one man and began to throw things at her and at Niven. David and Hjordis ran for the exits after he pushed the girl off his lap.”
Intimidating movie poster Mickey.
Not very intimidating movie Mickey.
This tattered but still attractive Lebanese magazine is called Al Arousa, which means “the bride,” we think, and it dates from 1957. The seller says that’s Spanish actress Isabel Mestres on the front cover, which shows what he knows—the star of this photo-illustration is obviously American model Bettie Page. There she is wearing the same ensemble at right.
