Vacations Can Be Murder-C

The second appearance (following Deadly Gamble) of Charlie Parker, an Albuquerque CPA who keeps the books for her brother's private investigating firm, works more successfully as a Hawaiian tour than as a mystery. On vacation, Charlie is taking a helicopter tour of Kauai, when she and the pilot, Drake Langston, spy a dead body on the rocky coast. The dead man is identified as Gilbert Page, a married California businessman who had just had a fight with his young girlfriend. The hunky Drake asks for Charlie's help after his friend, Mack, owner of the helicopter tour business, is arrested for the murder. The dead man was a loan shark, and Mack was one of his indebted minnows. Charlie travels to the mainland to check out Page's background and pokes around Kauai to find out how and when someone dumped his body on the rocks before she nabs the killer. Charlie's first-person narration is pleasant but not much more, and this lightweight caper never quite gels into an engrossing mystery. (Oct.)