The image of the Statue of Liberty welcoming the "huddled masses" to the Land of the Free is a powerful one, and is the recurring thread through the book. It is more than just another whodunit; it is a story about the plight of Jews in Eastern Europe and their lives in New York. Much of the book - which is short and to the point - recreates the lives of the three casualties in Europe, leading up to their embarking on the ship. They are not just seen as parts of a puzzle to be solved, but real people with histories, hopes and passions. This makes their plight all the more real-seeming, and has the reader keen for justice as well as the fact that we don’t know whodunit until the end of the book. It is always good to read something a bit different, and this is sure to appeal to anybody who says that genre fiction is too samey.