ANGEL DEATH

Chief Supt. Henry Tibbett and wife Emmy are vacationing in the Caribbean again--but this time their case isn't a classy whodunit: it's a lively but awfully foolish tangle with a villainous conspiracy, rather in the hoary mode of Christie's Tommy and Tuppence. Things begin charmingly, à la The Lady Vanishes, when a shrewdly dotty old lady disappears from the island just after claiming to have seen a young couple who supposedly drowned at sea some time back! The visiting Tibbetts feel obliged to get involved and are soon deducing that the old lady had stumbled into a drug-smuggling operation involving young couples who kill other couples in order to assume new identities. So Henry and Emma put themselves forward as bait, make some progress. . . but then Henry goes bonkers, abuses Emmy, and runs amok during a hurricane! It later appears that he's been given PCP (""Angel dust""), and while he recovers, Emmy braves another hurricane, teams up with a US doctor (who's working for the villains against his will), and learns that organized crime is planning to take over the island via a pseudo-independence coup. The authorities won't believe any of this, of course, so finally the Tibbetts must ""abort the whole scheme"" themselves with assorted derring-doings. Melodramatic folderol--made more than palatable by the scenery, atmosphere, and overall Moyes panache.