Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2005
We consider suspension hypersurface singularities of type g = f(x, y) + zn, where f is an irreducible plane curve singularity. For such germs, we prove that the link of g determines completely the Newton pairs of f and the integer n except for two pathological cases, which can be completely described. Even in the pathological cases, the link and the Milnor number of g determine uniquely the Newton pairs of f and n. In particular, for such g, we verify Zariski's conjecture about the multiplicity. The result also supports the following conjecture formulated in this paper: if the link of an isolated hypersurface singularity is a rational homology 3-sphere, then it determines the equisingularity type, the embedded topological type, the equivariant Hodge numbers and the multiplicity of the singularity. The conjecture is verified for weighted homogeneous singularities too.