Helpful Score: 1
Joan Hadley is AKA Joan Hess, author of the Maggody series.
Running roughshod over his delicate sensibilities, Theo Bloomer's bridge tournament-bound sister bullies him into taking his tres WASP niece Dorrie and five fairly pestilent college chums on a Jamaican vacation. The constant sniping among Dorrie, her boneheaded intended Biff, friends Bitsy and Sandy, oversexed Mary Margaret and her cross-dressing twin, Trey, proves quite exhausting to that gentle botanist Uncle Theo, who positively longs to sneak off into the brush in search of wild orchids. Readers may equally wish for such diversions after too many rounds of supremely adolescent insults send the second mystery in the Theo Bloomer series careening past the amusing realm of social parody and into a far more tedious one. Back in paradise, the pool boy is found face down in the water after drinking rum laced with deadly, unripe ackee, and Mary Margaret is held for ransom by kidnappers so desperate they drop the price after 24 hours. At her best, Hadley is quite funny, but the joke is simply not enough to fuel an entire book in which the mystery is almost incidental.
Running roughshod over his delicate sensibilities, Theo Bloomer's bridge tournament-bound sister bullies him into taking his tres WASP niece Dorrie and five fairly pestilent college chums on a Jamaican vacation. The constant sniping among Dorrie, her boneheaded intended Biff, friends Bitsy and Sandy, oversexed Mary Margaret and her cross-dressing twin, Trey, proves quite exhausting to that gentle botanist Uncle Theo, who positively longs to sneak off into the brush in search of wild orchids. Readers may equally wish for such diversions after too many rounds of supremely adolescent insults send the second mystery in the Theo Bloomer series careening past the amusing realm of social parody and into a far more tedious one. Back in paradise, the pool boy is found face down in the water after drinking rum laced with deadly, unripe ackee, and Mary Margaret is held for ransom by kidnappers so desperate they drop the price after 24 hours. At her best, Hadley is quite funny, but the joke is simply not enough to fuel an entire book in which the mystery is almost incidental.
