Robert Upton. Dead on the Stick (1986) 247 pp.
San Francisco private eye Amos McGuffin drinks too much—unless he’s on a case. McGuffin sobers up when attorney Francis Knight hires him to investigate the suspicious death of the president of the Palm Isles Golf Club, an exclusive golf resort located on a remote island in the Caribbean. McGuffin, who learned to play the game as a caddie at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, goes to the island undercover. The investigation uncovers a high stakes Skins game, adultery, drug smuggling, voodoo rituals, and murder by exotic wildlife … and McGuffin learns, the hard way, that golf is a blood sport.