(courtesy Macmillan Publishers)
As a general rule, when you think of things that are fun, you usually don’t think of murder.
But the solving of these murders? Ah, that is a another gloriously immersive thing indeed!
That’s been quite clear since the early days of crime-solving models and got a brilliantly engaging turbo charge of compelling enjoyment from the recent wave of murder mystery long-form stories which contain all the Agatha Christie-ian elements we love, but with extra mischievous vigour and fun.
Think any of the books by Stuart Turton, Benjamin Stevenson, Jessica Bull and now Catherine Mack (a nom de plume of a USA Today and Globe & Mail bestselling author of over a dozen novels) – and yes, Knives Out, which granted is not a book but which possesses the cited authors’ storytelling joie de vivre – whose enormously clever novel, and the first in a promised “irresistible and whip-smart mystery series”, Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies, is a worthy addition to this highly readable grouping.
What is so appealing about these modern twists on a well-worn sleuthing recipe is that they manage to be a homage to all the greats of yesteryear, offering up just the right amount of crime, red herrings and dramatic finales, but with a delightful postmodern twist, one that acknowledges with some sage self-awareness and ready, sparkling wit, that times have changed even if the base drivers of humanity have not.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ Connor says, spitting out the words as he releases me.
‘If you touch her again, I’ll kill you.’
I really should’ve read the itinerary.
Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies embraces this duality with generously fun-sized gusto, offering up a bunch of flawed people – to be fair we all are but there’s something about the requirements of mystery novels that all but demands they exist in a heightened form of plot accelerating imperfection.
Chief among the cast of Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies is celebrated novelist Eleanor Dash, the author of the Vacation Mysteries series who became a writer quite by accident after a disastrous short-lived affair with a charming trainwreck of a man, who has, despite her best efforts, stayed stubbornly in her life, and who is stuck on a tour of Rome and the Amalfi Coast with a bunch of troubled fellow writers (one of whom is also an ex though Eleanor desperately wishes he wasn’t), some super fans (one of whom is her stalker – oops!) and her sister who is both assistant and confidante and perhaps a rival?
Nothing is certain in Eleanor’s blessed but rather chaotic world where itineraries aren’t read, mistakes are made too liberally under the influence of Aperol Spritzes, and someone is possibly trying to murder her.
Well, what kind of murder mystery would be if they weren’t?
Suffice to say that Eleanor, who initially thinks someone else is the target until all the evidence points her to being the object of a murderous vendetta, isn’t thrilled to have life imitating art, an occurrence that has her regretting all kinds of messy and ill thought-out past and present decisions.
(courtesy Macmillan Publishers)
Acting as the narrator with a penchant for very funny, wonderfully self-aware footnotes, Eleanor is the hilarious and regretful, depending on the moment, beating heart of Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies which balances the wry hilarity of its title and much of its giddily second guessing plot with some real self-reflection on behalf of a protagonist who knows she has the world at her feet but at what kind of monumental cost?
She begins to wonder here and there if she might even deserve to die, that perhaps she’s such an awful person that she deserves to have people leave her personally and professionally and to even be given a quick bloody ride to the end of her life.
Sparkling with wit and verve and quirky playfulness that recalls the cosy vibe of Only Murders in the Building (which gets a shout out on the book’s back cover blurb along with The White Lotus), Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies is a gloriously enjoyable novel to read because it serves a classic murder mystery with a real head for the vagaries of the here-and-now.
Hitting all the right trope-heavy genre notes of crime fiction while keeping things humourously light and nimble is a serious balancing act that Mack pulls off with aplomb, recalling the idea that the simpler and more effortless something feels like, the more complex the artistry underpinning it (you could say the same about ABBA’s pop songs which sound light and frothy but are a whole world of musical complexity and superb talent contained within; the same dynamic applies here).
‘Why would I be trying to solve the case if I knew who did it all along?’
‘Cover.’
‘Cover for what?’
‘For this,’ he says, holding up the ring again.
‘I’ve never seen that in my life.’
‘I’m very surprised to hear it, given it was found in your backpack.’
The sad truth is that not enough of read for pleasure anymore.
We’re constantly harangued and cajoled to achieve something with everything we do, and that seems to have swept reading up in its wake, but just like taking in a sunset or daydreaming on a quiet afternoon, not everything has to have a personal KPI attached to it.
It’s fine to just read, of course for the fun of it (and my goodness you must and you should!), and you do with Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies which is clever, intelligent and gleefully self-knowing, armed with pithy, dark commentary about publishing and society at large, but also just an escapist, gallivanting romp through a minefield of clues, half-clues, misdirections and sleuthing with brio and zest.
For all of the fun it provides, Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies is also just so brilliantly done – the characters are fully-formed and richly expressed, the dialogue is sharp, pithy and endlessly biting and witty, the mystery is adroitly laid out if you want to think it out and through (some readers like to do this, others don’t but if you’re the former, you’ll have a ball) and there is a gorgeously immersive sense of mischief and fun that encompasses and fills it all with so much giddy forward momentum that you reach the end far too soon.
Thanks goodness we have a series in the offing; this is one reading party you don’t want to leave too early!