Smart-mouthed ex-NYPD cop Charley Adams and his wife Mel's dream vacation on one of the world's glitziest cruise ships turns into a nightmare when Charley agrees to head a team to investigate the death of a drunken, womanizing politician. With a mass media circus and onboard paparazzi providing front-page coverage in supermarket tabloids, the team wades through as colorful a list of suspects as ever sailed the high seas. Plagued by shipboard disappearances that provide alternate solutions to the mystery, the team faces an ethical dilemma of massive proportions. Much more than a literate oceangoing puzzler, Charley's Cruise faithfully recreates a ten-day Caribbean cruise with the fun in the sun atmosphere of the cruise ship at times in sharp contrast to the desperate straits of some of its passengers. Going behind today's headlines it provides a fictional but all too real look at the unreality that is contemporary cruising.