From Below by Darcy Coates

Hello everyone.  I hope you're having a great day.

I am an odd bird. I can hear you telling me not to be so hard on myself, thanks that is nice of you.  Of note, if you are any member of my family the response to my saying I'm an odd bird would be "That's an understatement!"  Forget them, you read, you get me...although my statement has nothing to do with reading.  I am afraid of dark water, especially deep water.  The thought of being underneath a ship, freaks me out.  Yet, I am obsessed with several large ships, especially the old liner the SS United States.  I think being a naval architect would be interesting, I just don't want to know about the big dark dangerous ocean being around my creation. 

In addition to the water being spooky, there is that whole issue of not knowing what is underneath you.  How can that not scare the marbles out of you?  I keep watching those fishing shows where they pull tuna out of the ocean that are 100 inches long and 500 pounds (2.5 meters long, 227 kilograms...God bless Google). To think about those giants swimming around my feet, I just had a shiver go up my back and it is a bazillion degrees here. Then there is the story of the USS Indianapolis.  If you are a fan of history or the movie Jaws, you know what I mean.  If not just google it, okay I'll shorthand it.  Ship sinks, sailors in the water with sharks. It crushes me just thinking of them.  Terrible way to go.  By the way, did you know that they originally wanted to use a "trained" great white shark for the movie Jaws?  Can you imagine?  Anyway, dark water = no, deep water = no, rain = yes if it creates a rainbow especially if there is a leprechaun at the end with a pot of gold.

I recently read From Below by Darcy Coates.  I have read several Darcy Coates books before and have liked them all.  If you are unfamiliar with her, she writes haunted house books.  Yep, how is that for a niche...just haunted house books.  You would think that it is impossible to make a writing career from such a narrowed genre, but she does a remarkable job.  In fact, she is often nominated as horror writer of the year on Goodreads.  This book is different, and I had to know how the heck she was going to accomplish her spooky norm when the "haunted house" was an old transatlantic liner, sitting at the bottom of the ocean.  Intriguing huh?  The gist of the story is that there are a group of people in modern day that are making a documentary about the ship.  There is much interest in the ship Arcadia because it suddenly vanished while on a routine voyage. At the time, ships close by had received a garbled message about some kind of emergency, not an SOS or Mayday, but something else was happening.  Then the ship disappeared.  Now that the Arcadia has been discovered one team gets permission to dive the wreck and film it for all to see.  The ship is sitting, basically whole, on the bottom in a state of remarkable preservation.  Despite this advantage for exploration odd things start happening.  Are the divers getting too little oxygen or is something more sinister at work?  At the same time the story follows the Arcadia, days before her sinking in 1928, counting down the events that lead to the end of the once great liner. 

I'll start with my only criticism; it is 469 pages and could have been a bit shorter.  That being said, I was "on board" for every single page! The book is moody and atmospheric.  It does exactly what Coates always does so well, hold the suspense.  She is going to make you wait to find out specifically what is going on, but she will give you hints, views out of the corner of your eye, all the while building your interest.  She delivers, so don't worry that you'll be left unsatisfied, won't happen.  Coates will artfully guide you through the story, slowly unraveling things little by little, with finesse and little gore.  Once again, Darcy Coates proves herself the master of the haunted house book, no matter the location or size of the house. 

You take your cruise vacation, I'll be home...on dry land!