MURDER MAKES WAVES

Not too many waves, though—just enough to put a dent in the vacation that retired schoolteacher Patricia Anne Hollowell and her much-married sister, Mary Alice Crane, have planned with their friend Frances Zata and Patricia Anne's daughter Haley. Mary Alice (she's Sister, the hefty one with the dyed hair and the brassy laugh) owns a condo in the almost-fashionable Florida fishing village of Destin that seems to offer her and Patricia Anne (she's Mouse, the petite one) a respite from the dreary round of kudzu, barbecue, and Piggly Wigglys back home in Alabama. So the ladies pile into their car and arrive at Destin, land of Gulf sunsets and land fraud, just in time to admire resident manager Millicent Weatherby's new makeover before she gets killed. The obvious suspect is Millicent's incorrigibly flirtatious husband Fairchild, but a little nosing around—well, enough nosing around to uncover a second body—suggests that Millicent's surprisingly extensive holdings in the Blue Bay Ranch development made her vulnerable to a wide array of miscreants. Even so, the emphasis in the sisters' hardcover debut—they're veterans of three paperbacks—is on their domestic fun (with no men around, they take breaks from driving whenever they like, and Mouse gets her own hair disastrously dyed); the mystery carries about as much weight as a nice bit of gossip at a family reunion. A regional aimed at Joan Hess's fans, though considerably gentler in its bite.