Susan Berg works in the detective agency established by her
father in Miami. Maybe it's made her too paranoid, she
realises as she forcibly tackles an intruder and finds too
late that it's her boyfriend. Susan admits the
relationship is over and gets back to work. The British
High Commission wants to enlist her aid about a vanished
girl in Barbados. Most of her clients are looking for
runaway partners or swindlers who've sailed off to the
Caribbean islands, so the case sounds both respectable and
interesting.
In MISSING BARBADOS Susan reluctantly pays bail for a
bumbling employee, Dutch, in the Bridgetown, Barbados jail,
and starts her search. The missing young woman, Lady
Melody, is wandering around the volcanic island incognito
with a young man named Reggie, who's eighteen and just out
of school. She's beautiful and her father is wealthy, but
this doesn't seem to be a kidnap situation. Meanwhile
Dutch causes further chaos by breaking into buildings,
stealing a bus and driving it into a low bridge, or getting
sidetracked by the lure of cash for finding an heirloom
sword.
Sugar-white sands, azure sea, island reggae fill this laid-
back novel, where drug runners abound and violence is
commonplace. Persons carrying handguns are found as often
as bartenders wearing dreadlocks. Susan's stoic attitude
is balanced by Dutch's improvident one, and the pair get
embroiled in several humorous situations as well as
dangerous ones.
MISSING BARBADOS by Willem Pain is an unusual crime story
which would suit readers of hard-boiled stories rather than
cosies.
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