PARADISE INTERRUPTED

Leaving her GGI security firm partner Jake Graham back in Washington, D.C., to oversee their stateside projects, black former lawyer Carole Ann (C.A.) Gibson travels to the tiny Caribbean Isle de Paix to supervise road construction, develop communication facilities, and establish a ten-man police force for new government head Philippe Collette, who recently supplanted dictator Henri LeRoi, now comfortably ensconced in France. She immediately bumps into fugitive Denis St. Almain, on the lam from a D.C. murder indictment, who swears he’s innocent—and been set up by the DEA. Has he? C.A. barely has time to investigate his claim, although she’s promised his mother she’ll look into it, since she also has to deal with an assassination attempt on Collette, the murder of the construction foreman, equipment sabotage, the clandestine meetings between Collette’s wife and wastrel son and a rogue DEA agent, a million-dollar marijuana enterprise, a banker with less than honorable ties to the island’s wealthiest family, and hints from St. Almain’s aunties that he is not LeRoi’s son, as he seems to think, but Collette’s. Still, in typical catastrophe-prone fashion (The Step Between, 2000, etc.), C.A. manages to sort through the genealogy and illegalities to create a tourist-safe island respectable enough to qualify for US aid.

After running into more perils than Pauline ever dreamed of, feisty C.A. surely deserves a nice vacation swinging in a hammock and sipping rum punch.