A cruise, with a contingent of murder mystery game players on board, sets off from Fort Lauderdale for Rio de Janeiro and its world-famous Carnaval. Little do they know, their pastime will be supplemented by some very real homicides.

Cruise Director Jonathan scarcely controls his own destiny on the SS Santa Maria. Bureaucrats in the Miami corporate offices, especially his boss, Sidney Streiter, strive to administer all on-board activities. Try as hard as they might, they can’t figure out who is doing the killing.

It’s not all doom and gloom on board. This novel is also a travel guide to the myriad pleasures of cruising and visiting the Caribbean and South America. It is also a love story about two people falling for each other while they flee for their lives.

Midge Franzen, head of the murder mystery group, is having a little better luck solving her on-board murders. However, no sooner does her group make some headway in sleuthing one of her fictive pot boilers, than does another very real passenger or crew member die.

Everyone is suspect — Sidney in Miami, Jonathan on the high seas, murder mystery fans on board, crew members from Indonesia. Will this boatload of murder fans be able to figure it all out or do the Miami bureaucrats have to helicopter in to take charge?

It all comes down to a climax in Carnaval-crazed Rio where a newly united Midge and Jonathan flee the killers by ascending Hunchback Mountain to hide in the body of Christ the Redeemer.