William Doonan
Praise for Grave Passage
Grave Passage is a fast romp, well conceived, and it serves as a perfect vehicle for this delightful new protagonist. Let's hope there are many more Grave cruises to come.
- Todd Borg, author of Tahoe Night
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Readers looking for literary relief from the tedium of the typical contemporary American mystery novel with its gratuitous violence and obligatory graphic bedroom sports will find intellectual refreshment in William Doonan’s Grave Passage. His major character is one of the most compelling ever to grace the mystery genre.
Henry Grave, an 84 year old retired professor turned investigator, with the usual nagging infirmities of old age, is nevertheless fully charged with a zest for life. As a connoisseur of international cuisine, his appetite is that of a young bricklayer. He drinks too much of everything, but is not really a drunk. He’s a jaunty fellow with the healthy appreciation of beautiful women, young and old, especially young, all of whom he charms beyond the strength of his libido, though he is sexually still sufficiently alive.
The dialog of this carefully structured novel is superb, always riding a cerebral edge and avoiding the cute flippancy of so many of its competitors. Grave is a master of repartee, his witticisms always on the mark. His author skillfully reveals Henry’s life in segments distributed throughout the book at appropriate points in the action. And it’s a full life.
My praise for the character of Henry Grave as an artistic achievement extends to putting him in the company of such wags as John Mortimer’s Rumple of the Bailey. A clean book, without being prudish, the sexual trysts are handled with suggestive reticence rather than clinical description. Readers of all ages will be delighted by this debut novel that reads more like the mature work of a veteran writer.
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Doonan weaves into Grave Passage a host of the nice people you will meet on the ship working to serve you; but the murder mystery is not typical. Yet, in telling the story, he takes us into the workings of the ship: the crew cabins, security, the casino, the many eating places, etc. A truly interesting look at the cruise ship; and past cruisers will identify with it all. As Doonan introduces the main characters, you get a sense that one of them "did it." Wrong; nice twist at the end. A book that requires a bit of continual concentration to decide for yourself if Henry Grave is on the right track to solve the murders. Read it.
- John Travis, after 26 cruises
