A glamorous cruise on a luxurious ocean liner turns deadly in the latest mystery from "Queen of Suspense" and number-one New York Times best-selling author Mary Higgins Clark.

Fleeing a disastrous and humiliating arrest of her husband-to-be on the eve of their wedding, Celia Kilbride, a gems and jewelry expert, hopes to escape from public attention by lecturing on a brand-new cruise ship - the Queen Charlotte.

Onboard she meets 86-year-old Lady Emily Haywood - "Lady Em", as she is known throughout the world. Immensely wealthy, Lady Em is the owner of a priceless emerald necklace that she intends to leave to the Smithsonian after the cruise.

Three days out to sea, Lady Em is found dead - and the necklace is missing. Is it the work of her apparently devoted assistant, Brenda Martin, or her lawyer-executor, Roger Pearson, and his wife, Yvonne, both of whom she had invited to join them on the cruise? Or is it Professor Henry Longworth, an acclaimed Shakespeare scholar who is lecturing onboard? Or Alan Davidson, a guest on the ship who is planning to spread his wife's ashes at sea? The list of suspects is large and growing. Celia, with the help of her new friends Willy and Alvirah Meehan, who are celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary, sets out to find the killer, not realizing that she has put herself in mortal danger before the ship reaches its final destination.

Never, in all her long career as a number-one best-selling suspense novelist, has Mary Higgins Clark been in better form.