Nasty Breaks

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. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

November 3, 1997
Golf pro Lee Ofsted takes a whack at teaching golf and another whack at solving a murder in her third outing, which follows 1995's Rotten Lies. The fledgling pro's friend, Peg Fiske, wangles her an invitation to assist teaching pro and TV pitchman Jackie Piper at a lovely resort on Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island. She'll be teaching golf to employees of Sea Recovery Systems, a marine salvage company, who will taking a working vacation at the resort. The job is a plum: the pay is good, the timing coincides with Lee's boyfriend's being out of the country, and Peg, a management consultant, will be there too, working with the same group from SRS. But the perfect working vacation falls apart quickly as the SRS people assemble at the resort. First, Lee interrupts an attempted kidnapping of the wife of SRS's owner, Stuart Chappell. Then Chappell is murdered in a way that suggests revenge. The tangled personal and professional relationships of everyone--SRS employees, the innkeeper, even the local golf pro--provide plenty of knots for Lee and Peg to unravel as they probe a murder with ancient and watery roots. Duffers will recognize themselves or someone they know among the amusing approaches the "students" take to hitting a ball as the Elkinses break par with their latest collaboration. Author tour.