Charmed Circle  Carol Smith, Author Carol Smith, Author Warner
Books $23.5 (355p) ISBN 978-0-446-52238-0 Reviewed on:
06/29/1998 Release date: 07/01/1998 When 27-year-old Londoner
Joanna ""Jo"" Lyndhurst, protagonist of Smith's disappointing
second romantic suspense novel (after Friends for Life) decides
to take a pre-Christmas jaunt to Antigua without her longtime
lover Sebastian, she befriends an international group of six
other visitors who reconvene each year in the Caribbean. The
group seems straight out of central casting. Aside from cool
medical practitioner Jo, there are the Fontaines, a
mother/daughter duo of pathetically faded Southern debs; an
overzealous British music festival planner named Jessica; a gay
Boston Brahmin mama's boy of a judge (named Lowell Brooks) and
his young, Dutch lover, Vincent; and banker Merrily Morgenstern,
an offensive stereotype, identified as a ""pushy New Yorker.""
When Vincent turns up murdered it's no surprise, since the deed
is foreshadowed on page one. A creepy and