SOMETHING'S GUAVA GIVE

A travel writer juggles her new gig as a villa broker with a time-consuming hobby: solving murders.

After losing her glamorous job as editor-in-chief of a travel magazine, Plum Lockhart slinks off to the beautiful Caribbean island of Paraiso to regroup. But after a brief stint working at Jonathan Mayhew’s travel agency, she strikes off on her own, launching Plum Lockhart Luxury Retreats. Of course, Mayhew still controls the classiest of the botanically named properties at Las Frutas Resort, leaving Plum only the dregs. While contemplating what heroic measures might make dreary Villa Tomate habitable, Plum gets a frantic call from Gerald Hand, whose favorable article in Market Street Journal gave her struggling business a much-needed boost. It seems that Gerald’s boss’s daughter, Arielle Waldron, has gotten in a bit of a bother at Las Frutas’ main hotel due to her irremediable shoplifting habit. By the time Plum can sort out Arielle’s legal woes, the impulsive young woman has shuffled off to denim-duds-king Dieter Friedrich’s Villa la Grosella Negra, where she manages to get herself murdered. Now Plum is no stranger to detection, having single-handedly solved Paraiso’s most recent homicide in It Takes Two To Mango (2021). So in spite of the obligatory warnings from Las Frutas’ director of security, handsome law enforcement official Juan Kevin Muñoz, she launches her own unauthorized investigation, with results as predictable as they are grim.

Lush tropical scenery adds a hint of spice to a standard-issue second-career cozy.