I mentioned Catherine Mack’s Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies back in January for “A Peek Ahead”. It’s a funny book, purchased for a TV series, along with the book’s sequels, with Mack to write the pilot script. The format is different, with Mack using footnotes to address the reader, funny footnotes to highlight the narrator’s opinion.

Eleanor Dash is tired of her main character, Connor Smith. She just wants to finish her book tour of Italy, write the final book for her contract, and kill off Smith. She’d liked to do the same to the real Connor Smith, the model for her character. Unfortunately, the con man, her ex-lover, is along on the book tour. He’s a favorite of fans, and of women. Despite her anger and frustration with Smith, she doesn’t like the idea that he’s in danger when he tells her someone has tried to kill him several times.

Eleanor would like to brush off Connor’s claims as just another attempt to get attention. But, when there are other strange incidents involving Eleanor’s sister, Harper, and Eleanor herself, she can’t ignore the feeling that someone might want to kill Connor and Eleanor. Her primary suspects are the eight people on the book tour. What kind of tour did her publicist arrange? Eleanor Dash turns to the reader for suggestions, offering her own ideas along the way.

I found Eleanor to be an engaging narrator. At thirty-five, she still regrets her affair ten years earlier with Connor Smith. She makes excuses, lies, and tries to cover up her past. But, there comes a time when she has to reveal all to the readers.

The first Vacation Mystery is humorous with the right amount of romance. It will be interesting to see what format Mack uses for the follow-up to Every Time I Go on Vacation Some Dies.

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack. Minotaur Books, 2024. ISBN 9781250325853 (hardcover), 352p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent a copy of the book, with no promise of a review.