The Moai Murders
Lyn Hamilton
Berkley, April 2005, $22.95, 272 pp.
ISBN 0425200442

Lara McClintoch, co-owner of an upscale antiques store in Toronto with her ex-husband Clive, has been to some very exotic places but has never really gone on a vacation. Her best friend Moira Meller, who is also Clive's girlfriend, convinces her to go on a real vacation to Easter Island, also known as Ropa Nui. The island is famous for its Moai statues several feet high and facing inland, several resting on a base known as an ahu.

Nobody knows who carved them or how they were made but the Ropa Nui Moai congress meet on the island and accept Moira and Lara as members. A native who has visions says that one of the group will die shortly on a specific spot. This actually happens, but Lara sees evidence that the member was murdered, not accidentally killed by a horse. When the star of the Congress, who made a very important find to back up his belief that the native language came from Chile, is murdered, the police are forced to act. The daughter of another group member lies in a coma and nobody knows why. Lara thinks that all these events are linked and she goes to extraordinary lengths to prove her theory and save the remaining members of the group.

After reading THE MOAI MURDERS, readers will have a definite picture in the mind's eye what Easter Island actually looks like, what the natives are like and who people want to vacation there. Lyn Hamilton has written a colorful, exciting and totally absorbing amateur sleuth novel that will be enjoyed both by readers who like a complicated and complex who-done-it and armchair travelers.

Harriet Klausner