Dead Reckoning. A Novel of the Titanic - Robert Walker

The Titanic didn't sink. What happened instead was worse.

April 14, 1912. First Officer William Murdoch sees the iceberg with seconds to spare. The Titanic turns. The hull clears the ice. Two thousand two hundred and eight passengers are saved by a margin so thin it shouldn't have worked.

But something changed during the passage through the ice field. The compasses deviate by exactly 2.3 degrees. The chronometers lose eleven seconds --- all three, in perfect synchronization. And below the waterline, naval architect Thomas Andrews discovers that the keel plates have expanded by eighteen inches.

Steel does not expand. Steel does not grow. And yet the measurements are irrefutable.

Told through four points of view --- the officer who trusts his instruments, the architect who trusts his measurements, the steerage passenger who trusts her paces, and the chairman who trusts nothing except the schedule --- Dead Reckoning is the story of a ship that survived the most famous disaster in maritime history and became something far more terrifying than a shipwreck.

As the Titanic continues its maiden voyage, corridors lengthen overnight. Passengers vanish from locked compartments. The temperature in the keel drops below what mercury can measure. And the class system that separates first class from steerage --- the locked gates, the guarded stairwells, the invisible architecture of privilege --- becomes something more than social hierarchy. It becomes biological.

Four people know the truth. None of them can reach the others. The ship's own structure keeps them apart --- and the structure is changing.

Dead Reckoning is a historical thriller for readers of Dan Simmons's The Terror, Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts, and anyone who has ever wondered what would have happened if the Titanic had lived.

73,000 words. Four POV characters. Twenty-two chapters. One ship that will not let go.