Friday’s Forgotten Book: The Girl in Cabin B54 by Lucille Fletcher (1968)

Dr. Vernon Grove had once dreamt of being a doctor who makes a difference in the lives of people, now divorced from his wife and estranged from his son, he is a ship-doctor who uses the time on sea to flirt with beautiful female passengers and have a fling with them. Usually this provides fun for both the doctor and the women but there was one such fling that went terribly wrong and which gives the doctor nightmares still. It was with a beautiful woman who had occupied Cabin B54.

As the novel begins and the ship starts sailing from the US to UK, it seems the nightmares of the doctor are coming true. Another beautiful girl occupies cabin B54 now and she needs constant medical attention as it seems something or someone is haunting the cabin. The girl who claims to have a psychic ability reveals such things which the doctor thought had been buried forever. Not willing to believe in ESP, the doctor feels that the other passengers – the blustering Major and his wife; the parson with the jowls, the Iraqi student – are in cahoots with the girl, slowly he starts suspecting his fellow-crew-members too. And what about the beautiful woman he had selected to have a gala time with when the ship started sailing? Is it paranoia or has someone laid a trap for the doctor to fall into?

As usual, Fletcher writes a gripping tale and the suspense is built up nicely but somehow I didn’t enjoy it as much as the other works read by her.

Have you read it? How did you find it?

*

First Line: It was a hot July morning in New York city.

Publication Details; NY: Random House, 1968.

First Published: 1968

Pages: 211

Source: Open Library

Other Opinions: Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

Other books read of the same author: … And Presumed Dead; Mirror Image; Night Watch; The Strange Blue Yawl;