From AudioFile
Amateur detectives come in all guises-why not a struggling female golf pro? Hired to teach at a salvage company's executive retreat on Block Island, Lee Ofsted stumbles onto a murder. The suspects are more caricatures than characters, and most are related to each other and a 20-year-old diving accident. There are some genuinely funny scenes here, and O'Malley reads as if she's in on the joke. She also brings out Ofsted's intelligence and courage. This is lightweight fare, competently served. And it helps if you like golf. J.G. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews
Twenty-five years ago, salvage divers Stuart Chappell and Benny Trotter, desperate to escape the stormy seas off Block Island, abandoned their partner Andy Gottlieb as he searched for the treasures aboard the long-sunken Good Hope. Now, even though Stuart has long purchased Benny's partnership for a pittance and made a fortune for himself, the two of them are back together at the island's Mooncussers Inn, where Benny's hosting the annual executive-planning-and-golf-retreat for Stuart's Sea Recovery Systems (SRS). The teaching pro will be motormouth telemarketer Jackie Piper, but what golf package would be complete without struggling LPGA pro Lee Ofsted (Rotten Lies, 1995, etc.) to give chipping and putting tips, chat up the competitors for the executive vice-presidency of SRS, and run into her usual quotient of felonies? The headliners this time are the attempted snatch of Stuart's imperious wife Darlene (``the Grand Czarina'') by kidnappers seeking a ransom of exactly $650,993, and the murder of Stuart, who's stabbed in the neck with an iron spike from- -that's right, the Good Hope itself. Is the motive simple avarice? Jealousy among the SRA also-rans? Or revenge on the part of one of the divers' distant relatives (more numerous here than at a family reunion)? More to the point: Will Lee ever get any closer to a round of golf than the loss of her graphite-shafted Cobra lob wedge? Dependable light entertainment. Add two strokes to your score, though, if you can't spot the murderer before the ninth green. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The golf course on bucolic Block Island has only nine holes, its fairways are swaths of meadow open to gusty sea breezes, and the "greens" are just compacted sand. Surprisingly, Lee Ofsted, there to teach golf to the executives of a local salvage company, doesn't mind. The setting is lovely, the rustic inn at which she is staying is charming, and the pay - $1,000 a day - will go a long way toward covering her expenses during her third year on the pro tour. After a bizarre, botched kidnapping of his sexy wife, the owner of the salvage company turns up dead on the beach. Lee can't resist doing a little nosing around, and soon discovers that nearly every manager at the company has a motive for murder. Plunging into the case, she asks her boyfriend, Graham Sheldon, a former California cop, for his expert help. As the pieces of the puzzle come together, Lee has to size up her competition - just as she would in a golf match. Only this time clutching under pressure could be fatal. For Lee Ofsted knows too much for the killer to let her live...

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Golf pro Lee Ofsted takes a whack at teaching golf and another whack at solving a murder in her third outing, which follows 1995's Rotten Lies. The fledgling pro's friend, Peg Fiske, wangles her an invitation to assist teaching pro and TV pitchman Jackie Piper at a lovely resort on Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island. She'll be teaching golf to employees of Sea Recovery Systems, a marine salvage company, who will taking a working vacation at the resort. The job is a plum: the pay is good, the timing coincides with Lee's boyfriend's being out of the country, and Peg, a management consultant, will be there too, working with the same group from SRS. But the perfect working vacation falls apart quickly as the SRS people assemble at the resort. First, Lee interrupts an attempted kidnapping of the wife of SRS's owner, Stuart Chappell. Then Chappell is murdered in a way that suggests revenge. The tangled personal and professional relationships of everyoneSRS employees, the innkeeper, even the local golf proprovide plenty of knots for Lee and Peg to unravel as they probe a murder with ancient and watery roots. Duffers will recognize themselves or someone they know among the amusing approaches the "students" take to hitting a ball as the Elkinses break par with their latest collaboration.

Kirkus Reviews

Twenty-five years ago, salvage divers Stuart Chappell and Benny Trotter, desperate to escape the stormy seas off Block Island, abandoned their partner Andy Gottlieb as he searched for the treasures aboard the long-sunken Good Hope. Now, even though Stuart has long purchased Benny's partnership for a pittance and made a fortune for himself, the two of them are back together at the island's Mooncussers Inn, where Benny's hosting the annual executive-planning-and-golf-retreat for Stuart's Sea Recovery Systems (SRS). The teaching pro will be motormouth telemarketer Jackie Piper, but what golf package would be complete without struggling LPGA pro Lee Ofsted (Rotten Lies, 1995, etc.) to give chipping and putting tips, chat up the competitors for the executive vice-presidency of SRS, and run into her usual quotient of felonies? The headliners this time are the attempted snatch of Stuart's imperious wife Darlene ("the Grand Czarina") by kidnappers seeking a ransom of exactly $650,993, and the murder of Stuart, who's stabbed in the neck with an iron spike from—that's right, the Good Hope itself. Is the motive simple avarice? Jealousy among the SRA also-rans? Or revenge on the part of one of the divers' distant relatives (more numerous here than at a family reunion)? More to the point: Will Lee ever get any closer to a round of golf than the loss of her graphite-shafted Cobra lob wedge?

Dependable light entertainment. Add two strokes to your score, though, if you can't spot the murderer before the ninth green.