Valerie Wolzien, Death in a Beach Chair

Death in a Beach Chair

Valerie Wolzien

Fawcett, March 2003, $6.99, 272 pp.

ISBN 0449007197

One miserable sleety day in New Jersey, suburban housewife Susan Henshaw decides she needs a vacation in a warm and sunny locale. When she talks the matter over with her friend Kathleen Gordon, the two women agree that they need to get away with their respective husbands Jed and Jerry to a tropical island. After researching where to go on the Internet, Susan finds that the Compass Bay resort on a tiny Caribbean island meets all their needs.

The Gordons arrive a day ahead of the Henshaws but fail to meet their friends, which Susan thinks is very odd. What is even stranger is Jerry's withdrawn attitude and unexplained disappearances. When a beautiful woman staying at the resort is killed, it is discovered that she is Jerry's dead wife's sister. The police arrest Jerry but he is not at all worried because he knows Susan will solve the homicide just as she has done many times before.

After reading DEATH ON A BEACH CHAIR in February, readers will want to take a vacation to a Caribbean Island because it seems so warm and paradise-like. Valerie Wolzien has written an upbeat lighthearted amateur sleuth tale full of witty repartee and humorous situations that the heroine finds herself in constantly. Nobody will guess who the killer is because, although it makes sense in a Monday morning quarterback way, it still comes out of left field

Harriet Klausner