THE GOLDEN TORRENT

Just before diver-archaeologist Judy Hamilton dies in a freak ""accident"" at an Austrian lake--her underwater decompression chamber suddenly zooms to the surface--she writes a letter to sister Ann expressing vague suspicions of one (unnamed) of the other divers. So of course Ann, recently divorced, scurries from the US to the Alpine countryside to investigate Judy's death: which of the three surviving divers aroused Judy's distrust? Liberated Karen? Suavely Latin Martin (""his voice was as soft as rose petals"")? Or the non-English-speaking duo from South America? Whichever, he-or-she is in cahoots with a Nazi war criminal who has arranged this archaeological exploration in order to recover a stash of wartime-hidden gold, and Ann's meddling leads to love (an undercover agent) and danger: the old brakes-tampering bit, a fake doctor (the Nazi) who poisons her. Neither the blurry castle-village atmosphere, the diving paraphernalia, nor some last-minute revelations can quite rescue this soggy scenario from terminal Tyrolean deèja vu.