Death in Paradise

Education consultant and amateur detective Thea Kozak (An Educated Death, 1997), returns in a yawner set in Hawaii. Kozak, attending an educational conference in Maui, far from her home state of Maine and the embraces of her hunky boyfriend, Detective Andre Lemieux, finds herself reluctantly embroiled in a murder investigation. Conference director Martina Pullman is found dead in her hotel room, dressed in sexy lingerie and strangled with a stocking. Pullman, naturally, had made an enemy of every board member at the conference, not to mention the first wife of her husband, Jeff. When Pullman's assistant Rory Altschuler attempts suicide and when she herself is almost drowned on a scuba expedition, Kozak begins to suspect even those whom she longs to trust. Flora's verbosity fails to flesh out the characters, most of whom are stereotypical and shallow. Beautiful Maui features hardly at all as a backdrop. The one bright spot is 11-year-old Laura Mitchell, Kozak's self-appointed Watson, whose nose for detective work puts her in the path of danger as the murderers use her to get to Kozak. (Oct.)