Nasty Breaks - Hardcover

Amateur detectives come in all guises-why not a struggling female golf pro? Hired to teach at a salvage company's executive retreat on Block Island, Lee Ofsted stumbles onto a murder. The suspects are more caricatures than characters, and most are related to each other and a 20-year-old diving accident. There are some genuinely funny scenes here, and O'Malley reads as if she's in on the joke. She also brings out Ofsted's intelligence and courage. This is lightweight fare, competently served. And it helps if you like golf. J.G. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Twenty-five years ago, salvage divers Stuart Chappell and Benny Trotter, desperate to escape the stormy seas off Block Island, abandoned their partner Andy Gottlieb as he searched for the treasures aboard the long-sunken Good Hope. Now, even though Stuart has long purchased Benny's partnership for a pittance and made a fortune for himself, the two of them are back together at the island's Mooncussers Inn, where Benny's hosting the annual executive-planning-and-golf-retreat for Stuart's Sea Recovery Systems (SRS). The teaching pro will be motormouth telemarketer Jackie Piper, but what golf package would be complete without struggling LPGA pro Lee Ofsted (Rotten Lies, 1995, etc.) to give chipping and putting tips, chat up the competitors for the executive vice-presidency of SRS, and run into her usual quotient of felonies? The headliners this time are the attempted snatch of Stuart's imperious wife Darlene (``the Grand Czarina'') by kidnappers seeking a ransom of exactly $650,993, and the murder of Stuart, who's stabbed in the neck with an iron spike from- -that's right, the Good Hope itself. Is the motive simple avarice? Jealousy among the SRA also-rans? Or revenge on the part of one of the divers' distant relatives (more numerous here than at a family reunion)? More to the point: Will Lee ever get any closer to a round of golf than the loss of her graphite-shafted Cobra lob wedge? Dependable light entertainment. Add two strokes to your score, though, if you can't spot the murderer before the ninth green. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.