MOONLIGHT AND THE PEARLER'S DAUGHTER by Lizzie Pook

It’s the late 1800s, and Eliza Brightwell’s father has gone missing off the coast of Australia after a routine two-month pearl-diving expedition.  Her brother Thomas was on the boat at the same time as their father but is obviously not being totally forthcoming about what happened.  Eliza, with the help of her father’s diaries and a young man named Axel, embarks on her own search for the truth.  I found the plot to be compelling, as Eliza tracks down clues and finds herself in some unsavory venues.  She is the consummate female protagonist for an adventure novel—smart, headstrong, and tenacious.  Unfortunately, however, the characters are all drawn rather thinly and struck me as singularly one-dimensional.  Perhaps because of Eliza’s age (twenty) or perhaps because the prose is unexceptional, the book seemed perhaps to have been intended for a young adult audience.  There is also a side plot concerning an indigenous man who has been arrested for Eliza’s father’s murder, even though there may not actually have been a death, much less a murder.  When the accused murderer escapes into the wilderness, Parker, the local constable, takes off after him and proves himself to be almost as despicable as Eliza’s brother.  Again, these characters need a little more nuance; the bad guys are too easily distinguishable from the good guys.  Thanks to Simon and Schuster for the advance reading copy.