January 22, 2024
Cooke (The Lighthouse Witches) adroitly intertwines past and present in this frosty spine-tingler. In 1973, the mutilated corpse of Argentinian scientist Diego Almeyda is found by the Russian coast guard inside a locked room on the Ormen, a 19th-century whaler turned research vessel. Something or someone gnawed his face off and his feet have both been split to resemble fish tails. The responders also discover sketches of a woman with seaweed instead of hair, and the message “She is on board.” With that Damoclean sword in place, Cooke flashes back to 1901, when Nicky Duthie, the daughter of the Ormen’s owner, is attacked on a walk and awakes aboard the ship, where she is at the mercy of a savage crew. Meanwhile, in 2023, Dominique, a secretive woman, journeys to the Arctic Circle to film the shipwrecked Ormen to boost the number of her TikTok followers, only to run into a mysterious trio of explorers, and experience bewildering visions of a woman no one else can see. Cooke expertly maintains suspense throughout, gradually peeling back the layers of each timeline. Admirers of Dan Simmons’s The Terror will be especially pleased.