A pretty straightforward pulpy adventure romance with significantly less nuanced characters than in most Agatha Christie books. The female lead has big not like other girls energy and the men are mostly strong manly men who instantly fall in love with her. Would be a fun enough easy read if not for the setting of South Africa which leads to a lot of racist and colonialist content that ruins the campy fun tone Christie was going for. 

Racism and sexism are fairly common in books from the GAD era, but I feel like the setting of this one in a colonial context took this to a whole new level. I’m not familiar enough with Christie and her work to know if these views reflect her ideas or are part of the character development (or both). Regardless, I chose to read those passages the way I read historical documents, and that made it slightly more bearable. (I’m a historian, so I have some practice with the distancing part, haha.). In that sense, it was interesting to read how the South African colonial project was perceived by the colonizers at the time, which at the time of the book’s writing was likely just read as the mainstream perspective by European readers. I really wanted to like Anne Beddingfield and read her as a "modern woman" and unconventional heroine. But of course, the ending was the usual, and her racism, internalized, sexism, fatphobia (What was that jab at Suzanne putting on weight?!), and the way she threw all of that at other people were just a bit much, characteristic of the times or not. On the upside, I thought the mystery was really well done, especially because I love mysteries set on ships and mysteries involving disguises. And coincidentally, I read Midnight by Amy McCulloch, a murder mystery that just came out and is set on board a ship (albeit in Antarctica) as well, at the same time. Highly recommend that combination!