The Trouble With Too Much Sun — Camilla T. Crespi

It's January, and Simona considers herself lucky to shoot HH&H's ad campaign for a new sun product on the sandy beaches of a Club Med on Guadeloupe where she plans to sneak in the R&R she badly needs. Instead Simona finds a lost two-year-old boy who instantly wins her heart and, later that night, hidden under the sail of a windsurfer, the body of his mother, Iguana.

Who would kill the mother of a small child? The machete-wielding coconut seller who had been her lover once? The sexy Club Med aerobics instructor who likes to lie or the island guide who dabbles in guns and voodoo? Simona wants justice for Iguana's son and starts asking questions, but before she can get answers, she discovers another corpse. This time one of her own crew is implicated, and Simona wastes no time in cooking up a recipe to mollify the police commissioner and risking her life to find the real murderer.

A recipe for Crisis Pasta is included.

"Crespi creates a believable inner life for Simona, a transplanted Italian with a keen interest in human nature, lush descriptions of paradise, and a whodunit plot that keeps the pages turning."

-- Publishers Weekly

"[Crespi] successfully conveys the peculiar mix of beauty and the touch of malevolence behind it that is the Caribbean. A sigh of relief to see Greenhouse [her detective boyfriend] reappear, and to see that Simona's stubbornness and humanity are both intact and able to move the plot ahead."

-- Joyce Christmas, Mysterious Women