Hitchcock horror meets Knives Out in this seminar-at-sea mystery, where a female Greek detective investigates the deaths and malignancies plaguing the ship after a beautiful mystery woman was rescued and brought on board.

SYNOPSIS:

A 100 foot super yacht and its six person crew, hosts ten diverse passengers embarking on a ten-day, Greek island seminar at sea. But the yacht returns to port after only four days, minus two crew members and with several injured or diseased passengers.

An insightful, tenacious, mid-30's Greek female detective, is tasked with uncovering the mystery. Although accompanied by a young staff member at the U.S. Consulate, she is very much on her own. First step, interview the passengers: the pedantic Berkeley professor/guest lecturer and his loyal wife; a Silicon Valley nerdy billionaire and his shrewd lawyer wife; a compassionale nurse and his adventurous, real estate developer husband; a famous South African DJ and his Nigerian girlfriend/assistant; and the two singles: a Chinese American renowned robotic surgeon, and a naive, shy recent college grad.

But Alexa, our detective, knows they are either lying to her or omitting key facts. So she leans on a crew member and discovers the ship rescued a stunningly beautiful woman from a sealed cave on an uninhabited islet, where she was chained in a box, holding an intricately carved clay jar.

Where is she? Is her name really Hope? And why did grotesque misfortune haunt the ship only after she was brought on board? Perhaps it is a virus brought on board by the woman and her precious jar. After all, before dying, the ship's chef became feverish and convulsive, instantly rotting any food he touched. But how can Alexa explain the changes in passengers' personalities? Innocent, young Maureen, now dressed to kill and drinking heavily, vamps the men at dinner. Adventurous Art, becomes paranoid and agoraphobic. Lauren, the ship's bubbly activities director, spurned after a one nights' stand with the passenger doctor, leaps to her death on the island of Spinalonga, a former leper colony.

It has to be connected to our mystery woman. Why else would mild mannered, subservient wife Joyce decide she hates her husband, threatening him with an ancient sword found on the island? And how could Maureen develop large pustules on her tongue, vagina, and ass; and Sally contract leprosy?

Alexa doggedly wades through the obvious and not-so-obvious clues, ultimately concluding that the mystery woman has been killed by the passengers and crew. But to their surprise, Alexa reveals that the woman's name is not Hope, but Pandora, and that the source of all the evil and wickedness was not the jar she carried, but her.

Well, if so, should the killers be punished? They were all simiply trying to end their afflictons. Alexa doesn't agree, but a legal loophole foils her. Until she reminds everyone that there is a mythological loophold as well. Pandora has retained one gift given to her by the gods that they all forgot to take from her before tossing her overboard.

BEARING GIFTS