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Senior citizen and now retired journalist and teacher, Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins, known to her friends as Henrie O, receives a phone call from her old flame Jimmy Lennox. Years ago Jimmy had asked Henrie O to marry him, but since she still felt too much for her late husband, Henrie didn't think it fair to give less than all her heart to Jimmy and she refused. He later married famous documentary filmmaker Sophia Montgomery, the widow of a rich businessman who left her with a fortune to direct and a family of grown stepchildren. Henrie O is very surprised to hear from Jimmy, but even more so when he invites her to go on a Baltic cruise with his new family. Jimmy thinks that his wife Sophia is in danger because of recent occurrences. A huge boulder falling by their home in California almost hit Sophia. Then a glass of wine that everyone knew was Sophia's was knocked out of his hand before he could give it to her – as if it were poisoned. Jimmy is afraid that because Sophia has the power to distribute the money their father left to them, and that she can refuse to give it to them unless they act as she tells them to act, that one of or all of the grown children want her dead. Jimmy hopes that Henrie will act as if she just happened to accidentally run into him and his family. He wants her – with her journalist's eye and her own good sense – to see what is going on and try to protect Sophia. Henrie doesn't want to do it, but because Jimmy would help her if she ever asked him to and because she still has a soft spot in her heart for him, she can't refuse to help now, so she agrees. Once on board, Henrie spends a few days listening and looking at the family at a distance and sees that the stepchildren all hate Sophia and resent her power over them. But she also can't think that any of them would actually try to kill Sophia because Henrie starts to actually like a few of the clan. Once she is introduced as an old friend of Jimmy's, she finds the children try to be kind because they all also like Jimmy, but Sophia has a lot of jealousy toward Henrie O and is rather cold. When Sophia finally does agree that she is in danger, she goes overboard and distances herself from them all. The majority of this book is about the mystery of whether Sophia should be afraid of her family and to see if there is a killer amongst the group, but happily a good portion is also about the places where Henrie sees the sights. Henrie describes the locations and we are treated to her own memories about her father and of her husband in the different countries. The traveler's section is wonderfully done and author Carolyn Hart has the ability to let the readers feel as if they are indeed there with Henrie O. As for the mystery and the family, that is also well done. The many members of the family all have good reasons to hate Sophia and yet the readers can still understand how Sophia got that way by a series of misunderstandings and personality flaws. Every member of Sophia's family has a fully formed history and the readers get to know everyone in a realistic way. When we learn about the worst thing that happened to the young family years ago, it is indeed heartbreaking. Any reader who doesn't mist up has to have a heart of stone! Just as the readers might think they have the answer for SET SAIL FOR MURDER, another surprise is in store for them and the story takes yet another deeper and darker turn. Always well paced and always with a surprise, SET SAIL FOR MURDER is a first-rate, well-crafted cozy, one of the best examples of a murder mystery series.
Reviewed by A. L. Katz, May 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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