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HULA DONE IT? by Maddy Hunter Pocket Books, October 2005 336 pages $6.99 ISBN: 0743482921 Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I loved the first novel in the Passport to Peril series, ALPINE FOR YOU. I was disappointed in the two following, but I'm happy that Maddy Hunter is now back in form with HULA DONE IT?

Once again, Emily Andrew is leading a group of Iowa senior citizens on a trip -- this time on an Hawaiian cruise. After a stirring lecture on Captain Cook, his exploits and death at the hands of those he thought he had befriended, Professor Dorian Smoker is pitched overboard, and his body is never recovered.

With the help of one the most ingratiating characters in the series, Nana, Emily's filthy rich grandmother, Emily searches for answers among the cruise passengers. There is a Nordic group, the World Navigators Club, who have come to confront Professor Smoker with the belief that one of their ancestors discovered Hawaii, a belief which gives them motive to discredit the Cook apologists.

Hunter makes less use of the off-beat Iowans than she does in the other books, but there are always Nana and Tilly, a retired anthropologist who has brought along the journal of a seaman for Professor Smoker to authenticate. With Professor Smoker's drowning, the journal disappears.

But who is responsible for pushing the good professor, who, we learn was a dedicated womanizer, into the drink? Is it his ambitious assistant? One of the Norsemen? Or one of the women on the cruise who is a spurned sex partner. And who is responsible for the death of one of the young Norsemen? Hunter weaves these tales cleverly -- a motive popping up and then being shot down. At last, Emily stumbles on the terrible secret at the heart of the crime.

I have two wishes about Hunter's books: I wish she would get rid of those Batman exclamations -- KABOOM, for example, and I wish she would deep-six Etienne, Emily's Swiss policeman sort of lover, who never emerges as more than a stick.

Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, December 2005

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