MURDER OLê!

A seventh mystery to be resolved by petite, white-haired Angela Benbow (The Geezer Factory Murders, 1996, etc.), a resident of the California retirement community called Camden-Sur-Mer. This time, Angela and her best friend Caledonia Wingate, with a small group of residents, have signed up for a series of three short bus trips over the border to Mexico with tour director Maralyn Wilson. The first, to Tijuana, includes a visit to a carnival fair, with a horsedrawn ride through a tunnel to view an exhibit called The Mummies of Guanajuato. When the ride is over, sharp-tongued Elmira Braintree is dead—seemingly of a heart attack. Trip number two- -Ensenada—results in the murder of the tour's bus driver, young Tony Hanlon, who's found dead on the beach by dour new resident Jerry Grunke. Through it all, Angela is agog over glimpses of the Camden-Sur-Mer gardener Juan Saens; the one-sided attraction of fellow traveler Roger Marx to the tour director; and the lure of the shops. Not until the last trip, again to Tijuana, does she throw herself—a-twitter all the way—into the role of detective, barely avoiding her own demise but unmasking a vicious killer. Repetitive catalogues of Mexico's streets, hotels, and souvenir stands; endless, boring, aimless conversations; and a preponderance of dreary characters all work to sabotage a plot only marginally better than most from this author. Harmless but ho-hum.