Safe Return Doubtful

Translated from the French by Eve Hill-Agnus- Published March 2025

This has a simple plot, a tale off the sea and a ship’s crew that by way of its telling, comes across as a sort of dark fairy tale.

Strangeness abounds, and that aspect makes Navarro’s debut novel, both memorable and enjoyable.
Midway between Brittany and the West Indies, the ship captain of a cargo vessel known for playing strictly by the rules decides, for once, to break protocol. She stops the engines, turns off the radios, and allows her crew to take a swim in some calm waters.

Twenty men go out, twenty-one return. The extra person is a blonde young man with glassy eyes who wanders the ship in a mute trance, perhaps a stowaway, perhaps an illusion, or maybe something even stranger. Other bizarre events plague the journey; thick fog envelopes the ship, the engines slow despite showing no signs of damage, a paranoia spreads through crew, resulting in unexpected indiscretions.

Navarro creates tension throughout, and an atmosphere that would suit a film adaptation. As in the best mystery writing, it’s what is left unsaid that as significant as what is. She uses the contained conditions of the ship to tell her tale that has a wider universal significance, in the way the great forerunners in the genre did before, Meville, O’Brian, McGuire, Simmons..

If there’s a criticism, it’s that the ending is a bit messy. Navarro created something really good in its first ninety percent.

My Goodreads score 4 / 5