This image is the cover for the book Five Passengers From Lisbon

Five Passengers From Lisbon

“The master touch for murders with superior entertainment value,” this classic locked room mystery takes place aboard a ship at sea (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Shipwrecked while bound for Buenos Aires, Marcia Colfax believes she and her beloved fiancé might not live to see their long-awaited wedding day. But a miracle occurs after being lowered down in a lifeboat into the dark, swirling sea with the captain, two seamen, and their fellow passengers from Lisbon. A rescue ship is spotted in the darkness.

When Marcia awakes next, she’s in a bed aboard an American hospital ship, the SS Magnolia. Marcia comes to learn that everyone was rescued, except for the captain, who was found dead in the lifeboat with a knife plunged into his back. The revelation sends shockwaves through Marcia. Surely it must have been one of the seamen, bearing a grudge against their captain? Or could it have been one of the five passengers from Lisbon?

The only thing certain is that the murderer is on board the boat, a fact that becomes gruesomely apparent when another corpse is discovered.

Now Marcia’s voyage to happiness becomes a race against death as a killer stalks the shadowy decks. . . .

Mignon G. Eberhart

Mignon G. Eberhart (1899–1996) wrote dozens of mystery novels over nearly sixty years. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, she began writing in high school, swapping English essays with her fellow students in exchange for math homework. She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, and in the 1920s began writing fiction in her spare time, publishing her first novel, The Patient in Room 18, in 1929. With the follow-up, While the Patient Slept (1931), she won a $5,000 Scotland Yard Prize, and by the end of the 1930s she was one of the most popular female mystery writers on the planet.

Before Agatha Christie ever published a Miss Marple novel, Eberhart wrote romantic crime fiction with female leads. Eight of her books, including While the Patient Slept and Hasty Wedding (1938), were adapted for film. Elected a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master in 1971, Eberhart continued publishing roughly a book a year until the 1980s. Her final novel, Three Days for Emeralds, was published in 1988.

Open Road Media