In Deep Water

Happy Valley meets The Woman in Cabin 10 in this dark, page-turning thriller from debut author Elle Blair!

A murder at sea. One detective. No backup.

DI Rachel Harlow is off duty and stuck aboard a cruise ship with her twin teenagers and uptight parents. Determined to distract herself from the complicated mess â€" professional and personal â€" she’s left back at Northumbria Police HQ, she embarks on a flirtatious game with a stranger on board… until she finds him dead the next day.

With no eyewitnesses and no official investigation, Rachel digs into the murder alone, going strictly against the captain’s orders. Dead end after dead end, she’s met with lies and silence from the ship’s crew.

International waters allow people to play by different rules, but Rachel won’t let up. Even when it leads her to a crime ring just as dangerous as the one she’s left behind on land. But at sea, she has no team to back her up …

About the author

Elle Blair grew up in Oxford, but has been a proud adopted Geordie for twenty years and lives with her family by the sea in Whitley Bay. She wrote her debut novel, In Deep Water, as part of the Crime Fiction MA course at the University of East Anglia, from which she graduated in 2025 with Distinction. Elle decided that writing her DI Rachel Harlow series whilst teaching English and parenting three young children was too easy so decided to add a wild French Bulldog into the mix. He is now the love/bane of her life and chews books faster than she can read them.