Book Review: Death on Cozumel Island by Cindy Quayle (Claire O'Keefe #1)

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Diving; and a few twists near the end

Cons: Needed a couple of drafts to really be polished

The Bottom Line:

Obnoxious diver

Destination bachelorette

Book needed more work

Is This a Series Debut to Dive into?

I love all things aquatic, so when I spotted Death on Cozumel Island, the first in a scuba diving themed cozy series from Cindy Quayle, I was immediately interested.  Of course, it’s sat on my Kindle for several years now, but winning a copy of the fourth book made me decide to bump it up my to be read list and give it a shot.  Sadly, it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.

Claire O'Keefe teaches English as a second language, taking assignments all over the world.  But right now, she’s planning to spend some time in San Francisco for her best friend’s wedding.  She’s the maid of honor, after all.  Part of the festivities is a destination bachelorette party in Cozumel.  Claire may have helped suggest it since it is one of her favorite diving spots.  She’s hoping to get some diving in around the rest of the festivities.

But diving comes with its own challenges in the form of Drew.  He’s a know-it-all bore who Claire quickly tires of, an effect he has on everyone he interacts with.  But when he dies after one of their diving trips, Claire is surprised to find one of the dive guides the prime suspect in the crime.  Can Claire figure out what really happened?

As I was reading this book, I couldn’t help feeling I was reading an early draft.  There was promise here, but just about everything needed some work before it was ready to be published.

Let’s start with the plot.  Drew is obviously the victim from the first moment he walks on page.  You don’t have a character that annoying in a cozy mystery without them being murdered.  It’s a trope, sure, but it works well.  So, I kept waiting for him to die.  And waiting.  Instead, we got multiple scenes of him being annoying.  I’m sure it was designed to set up more suspects, but it felt repetitive.  Even after he does die, the middle of the book felt like Claire was just treading water.  When things really kick into gear, we do get some good twists on the way to the climax, and things did make sense once we reached it.

Then there’s Claire.  She’s really not a very good friend here.  Now, I appreciate that we didn’t see more of the bachelorette party activities since it would have slowed things down further, but we still could have gotten more of her interacting with them instead of her just planning her next dive.  And, there are ways to incorporate the mystery into the group’s activities.  Then she does something about half way through that made me really shake my head.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Claire wasn’t all bad.  I did like her overall.  And there are some good characters as well.  Some of them could have used a bit more development, but I enjoyed hanging out with them as I read.

Then there’s the writing.  It really needed a solid edit.  Again, it’s not anything that couldn’t be fixed, but the repetitious words and awkward phrases were annoying.

I did love the diving aspect of the book.  It made the underwater world come to life as I wished I could go diving there myself.

Since I have book four already, I’m thinking I might jump ahead and see if things have improved.  Death on Cozumel Island wasn’t a bad debut.  But it really could have used another couple of drafts to polish it to its full potential.