DEAD MAN'S ISLAND

After 30 years of noncommunication, investigative reporter- novelist Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins ("call me Henrie O") gets a call from a long-ago lover—media biggie Chase Prescott of Prescott Enterprises. Chase is now married to waiflike Miranda, his third; is having mega money problems—and someone is trying to kill him. He wants Henrie O to join him on his private island off the Carolina coast, along with those present at the time of the attempt on his life (poisoned chocolates). The group includes his son Roger, stepson Haskell, lawyer Trevor Dunnaway, secretary Burton Andrews, actress Valerie St. Vincent, company executive Lyle Steadman, and three domestics. Chase is certain Henrie O's deductive powers will ferret out the killer. No modest violet, she agrees. But Chase dies, of course, in an elaborately devised manner, and just ahead of a violent tropical storm that rips the island and and its lush homes-of-the-rich-and-famous to shreds. An overblown saga—with a plot that, when finally revealed in all its silly ramifications, defies belief; a tiresomely self- congratulatory new sleuth; and mostly cardboard characters.