Peril Under the Palms

In another late 1920s detective romp, Beck provides a welcome return for college student and amateur sleuth Iris Cooper ( Murder in a Mummy Case ). While visiting Hawaii and staying at the new Royal Hawaiian Hotel with her Aunt Hermione, Iris is asked for help by her schoolmate, heiress to a pineapple fortune, Antoinette Caulfield, engaged to the very correct Walter Carlson whom she has brought to Hawaii to meet her grandparents. Antoinette believes she is being followed by a woman in white who she thinks may be either a ghost or her long-gone mother. Meanwhile, reporter Jack Clancy, who has helped Iris solve previous murder cases, arrives in Honolulu, and the two of them discover the body of Viola Blodgett, a New England spinster who was in the islands to visit the area where her great-great-uncle had been a missionary. Next the woman in white is found murdered. Old family secrets, a diary and the leper colony on Molokai are all keys to discovering the killer. Beck evokes time and place with an airy light touch that gives her stories the flavor and pacing of the best 1930s movie mysteries. They are a joy to read. ( July )