The Makeover Murders

Australian TV researcher Verity Birdwood, seen most recently in Death in Store , is stranded at an exclusive isolated spa on her latest entertaining case. An assignment to take the two-week makeover course at Deepdene and check it out as a possible documentary subject fails to thrill the practical Birdie, who arrives at the start of the rainy season. The staff, including glamorous owner Margot Bell and co-owner hairdresser Alistair Swanson, coddles Birdie and four other women as the unceasing rain threatens to flood the surrounding creek and turn the spa into an island. Soon spa secretary William Dean announces that Laurel Moon, who murdered his fiancee and five other women, has been released from the psychiatric institution to which she was committed. When Margot is killed in the same manner as Moon's victims, Birdie suspects the killer may be among the guests. She calls her friend, Det. Sgt. Toby, who arrives with Det. Constable Milson before the spa is shut off, but both men are quickly drugged out of commission, leaving Birdie, aided by another guest, to solve a series of murders with a nice bit of thinking. Happily the mildly eccentric, thoroughly modern Birdie isn't made over a bit. (Apr.)