Dark Passage: A Hannah Ives Mystery

After a slow beginning, Talley’s 12th Hannah Ives mystery (after 2012’s The Last Refuge) delivers steady wit, intrigue, and shocks. Hannah, a feisty grandmother and cancer survivor, joins her two compatible sisters and 14-year-old niece, Julie, on an eight-day cruise from Baltimore to Bermuda aboard the luxurious Islander. Once at sea, Hannah befriends David Warren, a terse and edgy passenger traveling solo, and discovers that his grown daughter, Charlotte, disappeared 18 months earlier from the Islander’s sister ship while working at their teen camp. What’s more, a young girl was viciously attacked on that cruise. Later, Julie is given alcohol-laced drinks, and, more disturbing, is assaulted, beaten, and dumped in a remote area of the ship. Is this somehow connected to Charlotte’s disappearance and the earlier attack? David and Hannah make a determined (if not always rational) team in a basically lighthearted read that builds to a satisfying conclusion. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary Agency. (Oct.)