Siren's Lullaby

When Robert Cramm, head of Cramm Yachts, and his companion, Beth Hardaway, turn up missing during a race from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to Bermuda, any number of people are suspect. Unfortunately, Kennedy (Dark Tide) relies on the action-movie technique of cutting back and forth between characters and scenes instead of building suspense the old-fashioned way, by developing characters and conflicting motivations. Consequently the questions that should nag readers are washed away like water over a yacht's bow. Could Sean Patton, the designer of Cramm's controversial new yacht, the Siren, have done in Cramm with a dangerous design? Was Cramm murdered by competitor Philip McKnight, who wants to buy Cramm's company? Too quickly, the focus of the novel shifts to Cramm's wife, Cheryl, unstable since the birth of their young daughter. When Beth's body is recovered, three months pregnant and bearing the evidence of an explosion, Cheryl fears that she is again losing her grip on reality. Vulnerable and self-doubting, she finds out that Cramm Yachts is broke and confronts the possibility that her husband was the father of Beth's child. More chillingly, she gets a static-obscured phone call from a man claiming to be Robert and, one evening, overhears her little girl singing ""Big Rock Candy Mountain"" to her daddy over the phone. Regrettably, what might have been a good gothic yarn is flattened by the lack of simmering atmosphere. Instead of being swept up in Cheryl's dark suspicions, the reader is distanced and, ultimately, uncaring. (May)