THE GODDESS AFFAIR

Manhattan p.i. Gwenn Ramadge (The Raggedy Man, 1995, etc.) has an easy-to-take assignment—find the thief who's stolen a costly piece of jewelry on each of the three previous cruises of the Dante Alighieri. Gwenn boards the ship as it sails for Acapulco via the Panama Canal. Also aboard are half-sisters Minerva Aldrich and Juno Ch†vez, daughters of the late, fabled Valerie Aldrich, who was head of Goddess Designs and was guided to the big time by second husband Lewis Aldrich—CEO, owner of Blue Hills Horse Farms, and father of Minerva. The family fortunes have deteriorated since Valerie's death in a ski-slope accident, and now Minerva is dying of cancer, though the illness is currently in remission. Gwenn is oblivious of all this as she probes the theft of a valuable brooch from the cabin of a distraught Mrs. Sturgess. Gwenn is suspicious of suave, older man Simon Kittridge, one of the ship's hired hosts, but the theft soon recedes in importance with the discovery of Minerva's body in the ship's pool. There are endless rambling interviews with Aldrich family members; a near-fatal incident involving a barmaid; intimations of drug-dealing; and lots of irrelevant bits and pieces before Gwenn comes up with answers that satisfy her, if not the reader. Meantime, her policeman boyfriend Ray Dixon, arriving unannounced for a short vacation, solves the jewel theft in a New York minute. A realistic guide to life aboard a luxury liner, but dull stuff otherwise—the dialogue vacuous; the plotting haphazard and unconvincing. An unappealing Gwenn is again outclassed by O'Donnell's alternate sleuth, Norah Mulcahaney.