It Takes Two to Mango

April 15, 2021
Doyle throws a fashionable, high-maintenance Manhattan editor into a publicity job on a fictional Caribbean island. You'd never guess what happens next. Tossed out of her job at Travel and Respite Magazine minutes after she's fired artistic director Gerald Hand, Plum Lockhart, unable to find anything worthy of her gifts or salary demands near home, deigns to accept an offer from Jonathan Mayhew she'd originally scorned: to run the publicity department (read: hawk the properties) for his villa rental agency headquartered in Las Frutas Resort on sunny Paraiso. The expectations on both sides are utterly unreasonable, and neither of Jonathan's other staffers, rival agent Dami�n Rodriguez or office manager Lucia, is much help. Despite repeated warnings from Lucia to honor Jonathan's edict and rent each villa to a single family, Plum, desperate to make her mark, rents a place to Jason Manger, who's about to be married, and his two groomsmen, Deepak Gupta and Nicholas Macpherson. The next morning, Macpherson's found dead outside the villa--and to add insult to injury, he's not even the same person who identified himself as Macpherson when he picked up the keys. Luckily, Plum has had the foresight to drink herself into an uncharacteristically unbuttoned meet-cute with Las Frutas security chief Juan Kevin Mu�oz shortly before she needed his professional services. Since Capt. Diaz of the local police stolidly maintains that "nothing sinister happens in Paraiso," it falls to Plum and Juan Kevin to sort out the modest mystery en route to rehabilitating Plum's professional reputation. Nondescript suspects, scant clues, and a heroine who's not easy to like. Great weather, though.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.