PERMANENT SUNSET

Murder strikes in paradise when a bride’s refusal to sign a prenuptial agreement is followed by her premarital demise.

Henry Whitman’s regrets about talking his business partner, Sabrina Salter, into adding an 11th villa to their Virgin Island property management company are magnified when the owner, Sean Keating, insists on holding his wedding to Elena Rodriguez at the villa. The wealth of the Keating family, which owns Keating Construction, confers privileges and attitudes that make them high-maintenance guests for Henry and Sabrina. Luckily, the Keatings are distracted from their constant demands by Elena’s refusal to sign a prenup the night prior to her marriage to Sean. Sean is adamant that he will marry Elena no matter what and that the ideas she has contributed to the family business, moving it beyond the construction of parking garages, make a prenup unnecessary anyway. When the morning of the wedding arrives and Elena is nowhere to be found, suspicions that she may be a runaway bride end when Sabrina comes across her body floating in the surf. Now the whole villa is on lockdown while police investigate the island’s latest sudden death. Although all members of the Keating family share the obvious motive of not wanting to share their fortune, the police are equally determined to investigate Sabrina for failing to keep her properties safe of crime. Even though she’d rather not, Sabrina has to depend on her boyfriend and lawyer-turned-bartender Neil Perry to keep her out of trouble until the murderer is found.

Diminished interaction between the two leads reduces some of the fun in this installment (No Virgin Island, 2015, etc.), though Dorsey’s plot has the requisite twists, turns, and everything else.