Good as Gold by Louise Patten

[Fiona Nitschke]

Not another novel where someone is fascinated by a family connection to Titanic, starts digging into the family cupboard and discovers a few waterlogged skeletons? Well yes, but this one's a little different as it's written by Louise Patten, CH Lightoller's granddaughter.

From the blurb:

quote:

Edie Quentance is the ugly duckling in a family of charming conformists. For generations, Quentance Bank has managed the wealth of its rich and aristocratic clients, and when Edie is pushed into joining the family bank, she finds the work very dull indeed. She passes the time trying to uncover the truth about her great-grandfather Kit, whose love of the sea she has inherited. Kit Quentance was rumoured to have carried a fortune into the Titanic lifeboat with him money that has never been found. Edie's excavations in the family archive unearth some shocking and far more recent secrets. She realises that Quentance Bank is not the paragon of old fashioned probity it pretends to be. As she tries to right her family's wrong-doings, Edie's position becomes increasingly dangerous. Her twin brother, her parents, her uncle she no longer knows whom she can trust.

This one's picked up a bit of news coverage as Patten's claiming Grandpa Lightoller covered up what really happened: QM Hichens panicked and turned hard to port rather than starboard as ordered by William Murdoch when the iceberg was sighted. The turn was corrected, but too late. Oh yes, and Ismay 'convinced' (not 'ordered') EJ Smith to keep sailing adding to the ship's woes. See: Revealed: the secret blunder that sank the Titanic

Well, that should help shift a few extra units, eh. The hardback, published by Quercus, was released in the UK on 23 September. I'll wait for the paperback.​

 

[Fiona Nitschke]

And here's a link to the publisher's site with information on the paperback: Good as Gold by Louise Patten. It's out on 30 September, so I may not have to wait all that long to read it after all.

 

[Fiona Nitschke]

Currently on special order as my favourite bookshop will be stocking it eventually, just not quickly enough for me.

I did manage to read a bit of Patten's first book, the financial thriller Bad Money and I can't say it grabbed me. However, with Bad Money stocked locally in a number of quality bookshops and the intent to stock Good as Gold (irrespective of the Titanic connection), I think that deals with a number of doubts about Patten's abilities as a novelist expressed elsewhere on this board.

 

[Senan Molony]

Hi dearest Fi... it's been a while. Too long. Ten years.

I wonder will you get the early sense with it of the end of Raise the Titanic... The Quentance family gravestones loom large initially.

Some idiotic inscriptions on them, too.

One grating simile: "He could see lifeboats crawling away [from Titanic] like fat, black beetles..."

Ugh!

 

[Fiona Nitschke]

Ten years between sharing a pint? You're right, that is way too long. Must do something about that sometime.

Glorious simile though! I shall look forward to that bit.

 

[Jules934]

I know I'm coming on this "rather late", but is there any truth in this tale??

Jules934

 

[Ioannis Georgiou]

No, no truth in it.