Decked (Regan Reilly Series #1) » (~)

Carol Higgins Clark went from typing her famous mom Mary Higgins Clark's manuscripts to following in her bestselling footsteps. Her feisty heroine, P.I. Regan Reilly, keeps readers laughing -- but always looking over their shoulders.

The daughter of a successful mystery writer and a P.I. with pizzazz, Regan Reilly is attending her class reunion at St. Polycarp's England, when the long-dead body of her former roommate turns up under the bushes. It's a case Regan would love to solve, but a prior commitment puts her on a transatlantic cruise. She shouldn't have fretted. The clues to the crime are following her on the Queen Guinevere. Here, on a ship awash with secret lovers, a fortune hunter, a jewel thief and an assassin, Regan is sailing home - and into the hands of a young girl's killer.

Publishers Weekly

Actress/writer Clark does her mother, Mary Higgins Clark, proud in this skillful cat-and-mouse debut. When Los Angeles PI Regan Reilly is in Oxford, England, for the 10th reunion of her semester-abroad college class, the body of her former roommate Athena is found buried in the woods nearby. Though Athena had disappeared at the end of term a decade ago, everyone had thought that the Greek girl had simply fled for home. Now Regan is appalled to learn that Athena was strangled to death. Another reunion surprise is the engagement announcement of shy instructor Philip Whitcomb, whom Athena adored. Once Regan realizes that she can't help the local police with their investigation, she agrees to accompany spry Lady Exner, who is Philip's aunt and was a friend to all the girls when they were in school, on her ocean crossing to New York. On board are also Regan's parents (her mother is a noted suspense author, her father a funeral director) and someone with plans to kill Lady Exner and her companion. Clark deftly ties the plot playing out on the ocean liner to Athena's murder in a suspenseful climax in this lively series launch. (July)