Acclaimed crime and mystery author Laura Lippman has produced her first cosy mystery, and it’s a delight from beginning to end. You may know her as the author of the Baltimore, Maryland-based Tess Monaghan series, and Murder Takes a Vacation is, as they say, Monaghan-adjacent. Muriel Blossom, a former assistant to Monaghan, plans to spend some of a recent windfall on a splurgy French river cruise, preceded by several days acquainting herself with the delights of Paris.
Itʼs sixties-ish Mrs Blossom’s first trip to Europe. Her longtime friend Elinor will join her for the actual cruise, but the days preceding are all her own. You might suspect that Lippman has an older auntie, family friend or grade school teacher who inspired her to so perfectly create Mrs Blossom. She believes herself adventuresome, though she’s exceedingly cautious. She wants to appear unconcerned about money, yet frets about costs regularly. She yearns to appear worldly, and is definitely Not. From the first page you’ll peg her as an inevitable victim of naivete.
She and the late Mr Blossom rarely travelled, and certainly not in the style to which Muriel is embarked on now. A kindly, handsome gentleman helps her at the US airport, encouraging her to accept the offer of a business class upgrade and enjoy the first-class lounge, both of which she does.
However, a late arrival in London causes her to miss her connecting plane to Paris, and this same helpful man arranges a place for her to stay overnight and a ticket on the Chunnel. Conveniently, this nice man, Allan Turner, has a free day before his business meeting begins, and he shows her the city. If there’s a touch of romance there for her, well, she isn’t accustomed to a man who spoils her in such lavish style.
The story is told in close third-person, so you see only what Muriel sees, including an intimate view of her good heart. And if you’re a bit suspicious of the intentions harboured by the solicitous Allan Turner at least she hasn’t revealed her biggest secret to him. Even Tess said, ‘watch out for gigolos!’ Muriel could afford this expensive trip because she’d recently found a lottery ticket that, before taxes, was worth more than $8 million! Once you learn that, you see every person who approaches her through the lens of suspicion.
Even on the London-to-Paris train, she sees a much-younger man watching her. He turns up at her hotel and invites himself to dinner with her. Danny Johnson claims he is a stylist and knows a great deal about clothing and hair, looking her up and down. She’s wearing the kind of outfit she favours, which may not be the most flattering, and he invites her on a shopping spree.
She can’t help but notice that every time she’s out with Danny, something goes wrong. After their shopping trip she finds her Paris hotel room has been searched, thoroughly. But the worst happened the day before when, after dinner, she and Danny encountered the Paris police who revealed that Allan Turner, supposedly in London, died in a fall from his Paris hotel balcony.
All this is too much, even for Mrs Blossom. She pins Danny down, and he reveals that Allan had been in possession of a valuable missing antiquity. He was bringing it to Danny, who is actually an agent in the FBI’s art crimes unit. Now the statue has gone missing, and the people looking for it are not necessarily the congenial type. And they believe Mrs Blossom is the key. When the cruise starts, more new acquaintances – friend or foe? – emerge.
It’s easy to see why cruise-boat whodunnits are so popular. They offer a (rather) limited cast of characters about whom the protagonist knows nothing, good or bad. And, there’s the peculiar aspect of shipboard relationships – almost unavoidable intimacy with a wide range of personalities and possible motivations. When the going gets rough, there’s nowhere to go, except overboard.
Lippman plays fair in this cat-and-mouse game. She gives all the information needed to figure out the mystery before Mrs Blossom has to, though there’s never a doubt that she is very definitely the mouse.
Lippman has produced a dozen books in her Tess Monaghan private detective series and 13 standalone novels. She’s a past president of the Mystery Writers of America, and her writing peers included her novel What the Dead Know among the 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time sponsored by Time Magazine.
Also see Murder on the Marlow Belle by Robert Thorogood.
Faber & Faber
Print, Kindle
£7.49
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
