High Seas Murder: A Lindy Haggery Mystery

Lindy Graham-Haggerty, a rehearsal director and erstwhile sleuth (Backstage Murder), leads her troupe, the Jeremy Ash Dance Company, on a 10-day Caribbean luxury cruise in this amusing cozy with a lush dance and opera background. Others aboard the Maestro include several Met singers, Suzette Howard's ABT stars, cabaret crooner Danny Ross and Times music critic Enoch Grayson, whom all the performers detest for his merciless critiques and vicious scandal-mongering. The cruise should be an arts lover's dream, but Lindy soon has her hands full with the tiffs, rifts and romances inevitable among such artistic temperaments. Then events take a fatal turn. Suzette claims Danny fell dead at her feet, when he was in fact safe in bed. The next person to fall is Grayson--who will write no more, thanks to a broken neck. The death of the unpopular critic is surely no accident. Later, Lindy witnesses the recovery of Danny's body from the pool. This time he's really dead. With only a few days before the end of the cruise, Lindy is determined to find the killer, who has to be someone on the Maestro, since the ship has made no port calls. Nearly every page reveals another romance gone sour or another long-cherished hatred, and Lindy knows all too well that love, jealousy, greed and revenge are the great recurring themes in the arts--and also the motives for murder. Her creator knows well how to produce an entertaining mystery in the classic tradition. (Aug.)