cover image Bermuda Schwartz

Bermuda Schwartz

Bob Morris, . . St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 (308pp) ISBN 978-0-312-32893-1

Wisecracking ex-NFL player Zack Chasteen hunts treasure—and people willing to kill for it—in Morris's offbeat third island-themed adventure (after 2005's Jamaica Me Dead ). Zack, who now raises palm trees in Florida, embarks for Bermuda with his British girlfriend, Barbara Pickering, and loyal South American associate, Boggy, to deliver some magnificent Madagascar palms to Barbara's wealthy Aunt Trula. But they get sidetracked from landscaping when they discover a wetsuit-clad corpse—his eyes gouged out—tangled in the rocks offshore. Aunt Trula's good friend, Sir Teddy Schwartz, salvager and diver extraordinaire, becomes their guide and a possible suspect when Zack realizes that the murdered diver was after the legendary true cross, a Christian relic lost in a 15th-century shipwreck that has lured obsessed seekers ever since. Wry humor and engaging Bermuda history help propel the plot. Author tour. (Feb.)