Permanent Sunset

Starred review from August 29, 2016
Sabrina Salter’s enormous charm, as well as her grace under duress, is on full display in Dorsey’s outstanding sequel to 2015’s No Virgin Island. Duress comes in waves as she and her partner in her rental property business on St. John in the Virgin Islands, Henry Whitman, prepare a recent acquisition, the ostentatious Villa Nirvana, for a splashy wedding. Sean Keating, scion of Keating Construction, is set to marry the beautiful, business-savvy, yet mysterious Elena Rodriguez. Tensions naturally run high as Elena resists signing the proffered prenuptial contract. The night before the big day, everybody goes to bed angry. The next morning, but for the absence of the bride, everything is picture-perfect with a profusion of gardenias and twinkle lights timed to alight amid the sunset ceremony. Sabrina eventually finds the bride floating dead in the ocean, and the ensuing mystery, chockablock with unanticipated plot twists, complex supporting characters, and terrific dialogue, makes for mighty good page-turning fun. Agent: Paula Munier, Talcott Notch Literary Agency.

Murder strikes in paradise when a bride's refusal to sign a prenuptial agreement is followed by her premarital demise.Henry Whitman's regrets about talking his business partner, Sabrina Salter, into adding an 11th villa to their Virgin Island property management company are magnified when the owner, Sean Keating, insists on holding his wedding to Elena Rodriguez at the villa. The wealth of the Keating family, which owns Keating Construction, confers privileges and attitudes that make them high-maintenance guests for Henry and Sabrina. Luckily, the Keatings are distracted from their constant demands by Elena's refusal to sign a prenup the night prior to her marriage to Sean. Sean is adamant that he will marry Elena no matter what and that the ideas she has contributed to the family business, moving it beyond the construction of parking garages, make a prenup unnecessary anyway. When the morning of the wedding arrives and Elena is nowhere to be found, suspicions that she may be a runaway bride end when Sabrina comes across her body floating in the surf. Now the whole villa is on lockdown while police investigate the island's latest sudden death. Although all members of the Keating family share the obvious motive of not wanting to share their fortune, the police are equally determined to investigate Sabrina for failing to keep her properties safe of crime. Even though she'd rather not, Sabrina has to depend on her boyfriend and lawyer-turned-bartender Neil Perry to keep her out of trouble until the murderer is found.Diminished interaction between the two leads reduces some of the fun in this installment (No Virgin Island, 2015, etc.), though Dorsey's plot has the requisite twists, turns, and everything else. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2016
In this follow-up to Dorsey's 2015 debut, No Virgin Island, journalist-turned-innkeeper Sabrina Salter finds herself involved in another Caribbean murder investigation. The night before her wedding, Elena Consuela Soro Rodriguez drowned outside the Villa Nirvana property in Saint John, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where she was staying. The powerful family she was about to marry into are all under various degrees of suspicion. Sabrina and her business partner, Henry, run interference with the local police, while Sabrina's sometime squeeze Neil Perry tries to keep the grieving fiance from incriminating himself. A divine locale and a quick-thinking amateur sleuth make this a great bet for both virtual vacation reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)