Cynthia Baxter is using the world of travel journalism as the background for a new mystery series that begins with “Murder Packs a Suitcase” (Bantam Books).
Baxter is already responsible for a very popular series of veterinary mysteries set on Long Island — which I haven’t read yet — but the new series featuring the slightly reluctant travel journalist Mallory Marlowe is a winner, too.
Mallory is still recovering from the accidental death of her husband — and coping with two college-age kids who aren’t sure what they want to do with their lives — when she takes on a job as a freelance travel writer for The Good Life magazine.
The Westchester suburbanite hopes her first assignment — a search for the kitschy old Florida tourist sites that pre-dated Disney and Universal — will get her mind off her shockingly unexpected widowhood and fast-approaching middleage.
On the plane from New York City to Orlando, Mallory meets a boorish (and garishly dressed) passenger who tries to claim her aisle seat. Upon arrival at her hotel, the writer is stunned to learn the creep is one of her fellow journalists on a big Orlando travel writers’ junket.
It’s no surprise when Mallory’s new enemy Phil Diamond is found stabbed to death in a hotel fountain, but fortunately for our heroine most of the other writers on the junket — and some of the hotel and tourist staff, too — have perfectly good reasons for wanting to see this hack journalist dead.
“Murder Packs a Suitcase” is a very light entertainment — perfect train or plane reading — but Baxter fills out the background of her story with sharp reporting on the rather corrupt quid pro quo world of travel journalism. She also supplies a very entertaining tour of vintage Florida attractions such as Gatorland and Cypress Gardens Adventure Park.
Mallory (and Baxter’s) affection for the more modest — and homegrown — tourist places that folks visited 50 years ago comes through on every page.
Bantam promises another mystery in this very promising series in the early spring. “Too Rich and Too Dead” will be taking Mallory to Aspen, Colorado.
