Murder Takes a Vacation

 Laura Lippman gave me a great surprise with her newest book, Murder Takes a Vacation.

A fun entertaining mystery novel that brings the reader a new and greater perspective on Mrs Blossom who has been a small side character in previous books as assistant to Tess Monaghan.  

We meet the quiet, unassuming Mrs Blossom is feeling unsettled after following her daughter to Arizona when she was widowed ten years ago.  When her son-in-law announces he is taking a job and his family to Tokyo, she decides to move back to Baltimore.  

One day she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot and her life is changed.  With the vast windfall she decides to take a cruise and bring her friend Elinor along.  The plan is made to meet at the cruise and Mrs Blossom will fly ahead to tour Paris for a few days before the cruise. Of course things start to become questionable almost immediately.  She meets the handsome Alan at the airport and he says he will assist her through the flight and to her hotel.  Just as she is feeling a spark of romance, Alan turns up dead.  Then another younger gentleman shows up on the scene, Danny.  He is very courteous, making Mrs Blossom feel better when she hears about Alan's death.  Surprisingly Danny also is on the same cruise she and Elinor have booked.  

Mrs Blossom tries to figure out who killed Alan and find answers to more mysterious facts that begin to appear as the ship cruises down the Seine.  We find out that Mrs Blossom who as an elderly full figured woman, was an assistant to another Laura Lippman character,  PI Tess Monaghan.  Mrs Blossom was good at her job because , she says, people don't notice older, heavy women.  She was invisible. She has always been able to use that too her advantage.  This time it seems she is being followed and her life may be in danger.  

A fun twisty mystery that keeps youo guessing all the way to the end.