The Trouble with Too Much Sun

Crespi ( The Trouble with a Small Raise ) offers her engaging third tale featuring Simona Griffo--a self-deprecating, slightly overweight, pasta-cooking advertising exec who has a habit of stumbling upon gory murders. This time around, Simona is soaking up the sun while supervising a suntan oil photo shoot on the Carribbean isle of Guadeloupe. She is surrounded by a host of secretive colleagues and mysterious locals, all possible suspects when a woman's body--messy after a hacking by machete--is found wrapped in a windsurfer sail on the beach. The victim, with the exotic name Iguana, was from the M etro, as the locals call their mother country, France; had a two-year-old son, Lundi; and was linked to a netherworld of cockfights, drugs, black magic, soldiers of fortune and political resistance. Though the narrative at times sounds uncomfortably like an ad for its Club Med setting, Crespi creates a believable inner life for Simona, a transplanted Italian with a keen interest in human nature, lush descriptions of paradise and a whodunit plot that keeps the pages turning. (June)