THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE WICKED

Given the chance to clear her sister’s name, time-traveling detective Lila Day returns to the scene of the crime.

Spector’s (The Rich and the Dead, 2014) sophomore novel opens with a dazed Lila returning from her fifth trip through time. Each journey seems to leave her more confused, and both she and Teddy Hawkins, her geeky billionaire patron, wonder whether her “transient global amnesia” might eventually damage her permanently. But Lila is eager to solve the next cold case when she realizes she has the opportunity to prove that her sister, Ava, didn't kill her married lover, Jack Warren, back in 2008 when they were celebrating his 50th birthday on board his luxurious yacht. Luxurious is an understatement: Jack’s yacht took six years to build and was a master class in design, with state-of-the-art interiors and accoutrements—none of which protected him from his own mortality. Though no body was recovered, Jack’s blood was all over the yacht, Ava went missing, and a dinghy was later recovered with more blood and Ava’s fingerprints. Not surprisingly, Jack’s wife, Elise, and the police fingered Ava as the killer, even though Jack was Elise’s second dead husband. And now Elise’s third husband is also dead, so maybe Ava isn’t guilty after all. Given Teddy’s blessing, Lila quickly arranges to take the place of the second stewardess—using some rather dastardly methods  that imperil an unsuspecting small-time drug dealer—and boards The Rising Tide. From the gleefully stern chief stewardess to the smolderingly handsome first officer to Elise herself, Spector populates the ship with a dangerous dramatis personae. Yet Lila discovers that underneath all the glamour lies a more terrible truth, a truth that will rattle her own bones.

A fun, nubile, seductive Agatha Christie–meets–The Love Boat, promising twists and turns for everyone.