At the Waikiki Waters Playground and Resort, where Kit has been staying, the body of Dorinda Dawes, who wrote the hotel newsletter, washes ashore. Around her neck is an exquisite and historically valuable shell lei that once belonged to a Hawaiian princess, a lei that had been stolen from the Seashell Museum in Honolulu thirty years before.
Will Brown, the manager of the resort, doesn't believe that it's an accidental drowning. In the three months Dorinda had worked in Hawaii, she had become a controversial character who had a reputation for pointing out the very worst in people. Will is afraid that she was murdered and that the murderer might still be in their midst, perhaps a guest at the resort.
Besides Dorinda's death, strange things have been happening at Waikiki Waters. Luggage has gone missing, food has been tainted, and tubes of suntan lotion are being dropped into the toilets. Could someone be trying to bring down the whole establishment?
Lucky for Will, he happens to meet Regan Reilly in the hotel lobby and convinces her to get on the case. Since Kit is infatuated with a new love interest -- Steve, a fabulously wealthy thirty-five-year-old retiree living on Oahu who is eager to spend time with her -- Regan is free to take the job. But once she starts digging, she comes across all sorts of suspicious characters. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more danger she's in.
Can Regan find out what really happened to Dorinda before it's too late for someone else? Before it's too late for her?
Is the culprit someone from the tour group visiting from Hudville, a town where it rains 89 percent of the time? Is it one of the employees at the hotel? Could it be Jazzy, a social climber who has a job house-sitting on the Big Island? Just who had it in for Dorinda? Regan's investigation takes the reader on a fast-paced ride from Waikiki to the Big Island of Hawaii and back again.
Brian and Vanessa T. (torotech) wrote on 6/14/2006...
1 member(s) found this review helpful.
Another well written Mystery by Carol Higgins CLark Her Mystery's are text book and always a quick read. This one is based in Hawaii which made it very interesting and fun local for a mystery murder.
Recently engaged, Regan had planned weekend in New York with fiance, Jack. A blizzard closes all airports in the area so when her best friend, Kit, calls from Hawaii & urges her to come spend a last single girls weekend she accepts her invitation. After an employee of the hotel drowns, the manager asks Regan to see what she can find out about the drowning, which he doesn't think is accidental. One of a pair of royal leis that was stolen 30 years ago is found around the dead woman's neck. How did she end up with it? Regan is up to her neck in another case while Kit is busy with a new boyfriend.
I don't like all of Clark's series about Regan Reilly, but I did enjoy this one in which Regan accompanies friend Kit to the The Waikiki Waters Playground and Resort in Hawaii. There she finds herself embroiled with apparent hotel sabotage and murder. Not to mention the highly suspect man with whom friend Kit falls instantly in love. With a little help from her fiance Jack "no relation" Reilly, snowbound in New York, Regan saves the day and the New York airports finally reopen.