Cozy mystery. Perfect for picking up and putting down over the summer months. Older protagonist. If you liked the authors previous works you will like this.

Mrs Blossom's lottery win has taken her to unexpected places. Or rather, it is perfectly reasonable for her to be spending some of her wins on a luxury cruise but she encounters during that time is decidedly unexpected.

Travelling down the Seine, you're pretty much guaranteed great food and charming spots to visit, but you probably would not expect to come across artefact theft or imminent danger.

Luckily, Mrs Blossom isn't just a nice lady who happens to be a grandmother. She also has a sharp mind and an ability to blend into the background that can prove very useful indeed on occasions such as this...

Murder Takes a Vacation is something of a departure from Laura Lippman's useful dark, mysterious thrillers, but it will certainly appeal to aficionados of cosy crime. My reading preferences fit better into the first category, but this was an enjoyable read, and gets 3.5 stars.

I suppose you could say that Murder Takes A Vacation fits into the genre of senior-led, cosy crime that is so popular at the moment, so it behoves me to say that far from being a craven example of jumping on a bandwagon, Mrs Blossom has been around since Laura Lippman's 2008 novel, Another Thing To Fall. Lippman is always a must-read for me, and her Tess Monaghan series is one I return to time and again, so I was delighted to learn that her new book featured Mrs Blossom, one of my favourite minor characters from that series.

Murder Takes A Vacation is certainly a departure (no pun intended) from Lippman's usual books, most obviously in the choice of setting, as although Baltimore features briefly at the very start and end of the novel, most of the action takes place in France, with a short diversion to London on the way. The tone maintains the touches of humour found in the Monaghan series, but Muriel Blossom is a less cynical character than Tess (although woe betide anyone who assumes that because Mrs Blossom is (by her own description) fat and old, that she is also simple minded or incompetent).

I absolutely loved the book, and think it will appeal to fans of Richard Osman, Robert Thorogood and Deanna Raybourn's Killers of a Certain Age. Meanwhile, I'm holding out hope that, with Mrs Blossom firmly back in Baltimore and multiple mentions of Tess, that the next Lippman might finally be another Tess Monaghan book - perhaps a two-hander with Mrs Blossom as co-investigator?

Murder takes a Vacation is centred around a 60 something Mrs Blossom, who throughout the whole book moans about her weight and age (way too much). She comes into fortune and takes a cruise with her friend.

Unfortunately this was a 2 star for me, I didn’t really get on with the writing style and wasn’t overall interested in the plot because it was too slow paced for me personally. I didn’t enough how centred it was around being overweight, although the character did find peace with this topic in the end.