Review of the “Murder Takes a Vacation” by Laura Lippman. Or: Miss Marple Goes on a Boozy River Cruise and Accidentally Solves a Mildly Interesting Crime

 

Let me begin by saluting the Herculean marketing department that made Murder Takes a Vacation one of the most blurbed books in modern publishing history. You know a book is ready for liftoff when it’s been personally endorsed by the literary equivalent of the Avengers: Stephen King, Tana French, Elin Hilderbrand, and half of the British Isles have all declared it “brilliant,” “charming,” “perfect,” or “razor-sharp.” If hype were substance, this book would cure polio.

And yet.

Mrs. Blossom, our hero, is a middle-aged widow with a dead husband, a found lottery ticket, and a bucket list filled with art theft and murder. She’s also the kind of “invisible older woman” the publishing world suddenly discovered could sell books, now that boomers have disposable income and time to sit still. So off she goes on a Parisian river cruise, presumably paid for with that conveniently found lottery ticket, where she falls into a murder mystery involving a flirtatious stranger, stolen art, and enough creaky dialogue to fill the Louvre.

This isn’t a bad book. Let’s be clear. Lippman is a pro. The sentences are clean. The pacing is… polite. The mystery makes just enough sense to avoid collapse, and the whole thing skims along like a barge of cozy clichés. But make no mistake: this is the literary equivalent of an all-inclusive cruise buffet: comforting, familiar, and designed not to upset anyone’s digestion.

Yes, there’s a dead man named Allan. Yes, Mrs. Blossom becomes an amateur sleuth with a suitcase full of feelings. And yes, a mysterious man named Danny keeps lurking around like a European knock-off James Bond who moonlights as a tour guide. But the stakes are feather-light, the “twists” arrive wearing glow-in-the-dark vests, and the tension is so mild it could be prescribed to toddlers.

What saves this book from slipping into total oblivion is the character of Mrs. Blossom herself. She’s written with enough wit and low-key bitterness to qualify as sassy, but not so much that she offends your aunt who watches Hallmark murder movies. And apparently, that’s all it takes now to be called “razor-sharp.” I’ve seen sharper insights on a Pinterest board.

Meanwhile, Murder Takes a Vacation has been called “a triumph,” “an acid-dipped beauty,” “a romp,” “fun,” “witty,” “heartfelt,” “devastating,” and “structurally exciting.” Friends, I read it. I finished it. I flipped it over to see if there was an actual book inside. It is a pleasant, cozy, airplane-tier mystery with a couple of flirt scenes and a dead guy. That’s it. That’s the pitch.

But because Laura Lippman is a literary household name and has paid her dues twenty-five books deep, this becomes not just a book, but an event. A “celebration,” if you read the press. An “exploration of female invisibility” if you squint. Really, it’s Miss Marple meets mild Tinder scandal on a boat.

Final Verdict:

If this book had been written by a debut author named something like Chloe Middleton-Byrd with no agent and a Substack, it would’ve been politely rejected by six dozen publishers for being too “soft,” “cozy-adjacent,” or “not high-concept enough.” But because it’s Laura Lippman, we’re calling it “genre-bending” and “ingenious.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (one for prose, one for plot cohesion, and one for the sheer gravitational force of that blurb pile)

Murder Takes a Vacation: Come for the art theft, stay for the mild flirting, and marvel at how publishing turned a competent beach read into the Second Coming of Agatha Christie.