My Body Lies Over the Ocean

Sarah Deane, teaching fellow at a Maine college, and her husband, Alex, an internist (both last seen in The Garden Plot), are in unfamiliar waters--literally--when they escort Sarah's feisty aunt Julia, 70, back to the States on the maiden voyage of the British liner Queen Victoria. This cheeky mystery wastes no time in setting up a convoluted plot that puts the naturally paranoid Sarah on full alert. A member of the British Trade Commission is hit by an automobile and killed just before boarding. Another member dies in his cabin from a seemingly accidental fall. Sarah takes it upon herself to protect a third member, a youthful drunk and wastrel, with his free-wheeling girlfriend, Liza, assisting. Circling around Sarah and the equally suspicious Aunt Julia are several sinister shipmates, none of whom is quite what he or she seems. What about the frenetic duo lecturing on ""Ships in Peril""? Is the object of Aunt Julia's shipboard romance a clever con man? How about the chaplain's sneaky assistant? And what is the ship's murky connection to the Titanic? By relentlessly prying and eavesdropping, Julia gets a handle on the situation--and puts herself and Aunt Julia in grave danger. Always witty, sometimes farcical, full of wonderfully arcane allusions to old movies, this novel succeeds as a tightly controlled and unflagging thriller. (Feb.)