September 1939, Miss Joan Lambert, a stylish young college teacher from Texas, moves among anxious passengers boarding the Lorraine at Le Havre. Her first trip to France has been interrupted by German aggression and angry clouds of international war Relieved by her good fortune in obtaining passage on one of the last passenger ships to leave France as military mobilization begins, she finds that her eight-day voyage to New York is soon fraught with unsettling dangers. To avoid German warships, the Lorraine zigzags off course across the North Atlantic, creating an eerie atmosphere aboard with all outside lights obscured - thus three dark decks. Then a prominent passenger disappears and is assumed murdered. The witty and independent Joan becomes involved in high seas romance and in solving the crime. Among the ship passengers are several intriguing personalities-all becoming prime suspects by supposed motive and opportunity. In the tradition of Agatha Christie, Eusibia Lutz creates and entertaining novel in a time capsule preserving the language, fashion, anxieties, and mystery style of 1939. An afterword matches events in Three Dark Decks with the author's actual escape from Hitler's invasion. The onset of World War II springs to life in both the fiction and the factual background account.