PORT OF SEVEN STRANGERS

Crime Club item and swell reading -- smooth -- fast -- slightly overplotted and with a few loose ends, but exciting. Sultry Vera Cruz at season's end and a luxury hotel provide setting for successive murders, attempted abduction, confusion of identity, jewel thievery and international crooks. Gail Warren, young and impressionable American traveling with her aunt, finds herself in the midst of violence, hate, and romance -- victim and accused -- as one of seven strangers in the hotel whose unwitting interference throws her in the path of the plotters. She -- and the flier with whom she falls in love -- save the day.