HIGH SEAS MURDER
by Shelley Freydont
A few pounds and decades past her dancing days, Lindy Graham-Haggerty is now directing the Jeremy Ash Dance Company, appeasing her own empty-nest syndrome by mothering its troupe, and glumly contemplating Christmas–New Year's without her husband as she boards the Maestro, a luxury yacht filled with two hundred lovers of the arts and entertainers from the world of opera, ballet, string quartets, and cabaret. Lindy, unfortunately, is right at the foot of the stairs when acid-penned music critic Enoch Grayson trips—or was he pushed? —and breaks his neck. Then drunken, lecherous Danny Ross, cabaret celebrity, drowns in the pool—or was he held under? Did scrawny rock star David Beck commit mayhem in a drug-induced haze? Was Suzette the ballet mistress too zealously guarding her daughter Dede? Ross's wife and son, a powerful opera star, and even a cabin steward also come under suspicion as Lindy pries into everybody's business, with the nosey parker assistance of a batch of outlandishly gay dancers, and the company costumer and business manager. After ten days at sea, with the bodies and alibis and sunburn victims piling up, the Maestro docks, the cops arrive to handcuff the guilty, and Lindy heads for the ’burbs and home.
The midnight buffet has more character than the show-biz stereotypes. Wisecracks that grate and a plot that lists make this no more appealing than its predecessor (Backstage Murder, 1999).