Chauncey McFadden, an erudite but low-rent detective from LA, receives a frantic phone call from the president of a Miami-based cruise line. Two employees have been killed in port, and Chauncey is hired to solve the crime and prevent further atrocities. He boards the next cruise for a two-week jaunt in the Caribbean, and brings his girlfriend along as a female operative. The portly, wisecracking Chauncey has limited homicide experience but naively accepts this job thinking it will be little more than a free vacation. Death Cruise is a riveting, fast-paced story that includes a drug-smuggling cartel with voodoo roots, a corporate takeover artist thwarted in his recent attempt to seize control of the cruise line, an international assassin for hire and a drug-smuggling operation that brought cocaine into Miami from Caribbean islands. From Jamaica to the Dominican Republic; Chauncey barely escapes three attempts on his own life and muddles through a maze of murder to solve the grisly murders. Death Cruise is a serious, literate mystery written in a humorous vein.