The Floating Admiral

The Floating Admiral

- Mystery Group -

What an interesting writing exercise - take a group of top mystery novelists and have them each write one chapter of a book...without knowing the ending/solution. That is essential what happened to make The Floating Admiral.

At first I thought this was an Agatha Christie book, as her name is displayed very prominently on the front cover. Even after seeing a couple of other names underneath Her's (in smaller font I'll point out), I still had the strong impression that this was an Agatha Christie book, but maybe she had a little help writing it.

Nope. Agatha only writes one chapter, just like all the other authors. What a marketing grab!

After figuring out that Christie was not main mind behind the book, I decided to give it a shot and read it anyway.

The overall book / story was okay. A typical murder mystery. A smart detective, a few well placed clues, a bunch of red herrings, and a nice little wrap up at the end. 

What was actually surprising to me was that the book flowed so well, all the way through, considering it was written by like 20 different people, each only doing one small bit. 

The authors also gave an explanation to their chapter. What they thought was the final solution to the murder of the Admiral. Wow, did some of the authors really miss the mark!

What was really interesting to me was the small differences between the chapters - the actual writing. Some authors focused on the clues, some on the relationships, some on the environment. The dialogue was different every chapter too. Some chapters were full of witty conversations. Others, almost bare. You really get a feel for every author's style and tone when you have a chance to compare them side by side, chapter by chapter. Very, very interesting.