Ten days. Eight suspects. Six cities. Five authors. Three bodies. One trip to die for.
Eleanor Dash, bestselling author of the Vacation Mysteries series, is on a book tour along the gorgeous Amalfi Coast when life starts imitating art as her ex-boyfriend (and book protagonist) Connor Smith is targeted by a killer.
Eleanor’s sleuthing skills are about to be put to the ultimate test as – among literary rivals, rabid fans, a crazed stalker and another ex-flame on tour with her – suspicions are flying faster than paperbacks off a bestseller shelf. 
But who is really trying to get away with murder?

The cover and the blurb set my expectations as: Beach-Read, Cosy-Mystery, Book-About-Books, with snarky humour from a strong female character in a glamorous location. It delivered all of that and in style but I was delighted to find that it went further by doing clever things with form and narrative that hooked me into the story and made me smile.

‘Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies‘ has a decent murder mystery plot, a rising body count and a rich suspect pool, all set in Italian tourist hotspots. Eleanor Dash, the main character, had a satisfyingly complex backstory and a relationship with her younger sister that felt real to me. The novel is also rich in humour, much of it at the expense of the publishing industry and the behaviour of writers, readers and the kind of devoted fans who have t-shirts made with their favourite author’s book covers on them.

All of that made it good fun but what made it stand out for me was the innovative storytelling approach. The whole novel is written as a direct address to the reader from Eleanor Dash.

What’s innovative about that?

Well, what starts off as a fairly conventional first-person interior monologue develops into a conversation with four layers to it.

The main layer is the interior monologue which provides a real-time account, written up by Eleanor Dash after the event but in which she DOESN’T know what happens next. This is supplemented by footnotes written by Eleanor Dash and used to add details, commentary and cultural references, all of which show that she DOES know what happens next. The third layer is a set of publishing-related materials that Eleanor intersperses throughout the narrative. These vary from a New York Times interview titled “Ten Years, Ten Books – What’s Next For Eleanor Dash?” through lists of the titles of Eleanor Dash’s novels to an ever-changing Outline of her next novel, which has the working title of “Amalfi Made Me Do It“. This layer made me laugh as well as providing context for the mystery and building Eleanor’s character, Finally, there are the points when Eleanor Dash breaks the fourth wall to step out of her role as a character in the novel to take up her role as the author of the novel so she can display the structure of the novel and have an author-to-reader conversation about how the novel is going.

These four layers worked very well for me. I especially liked the way the layers of storytelling interacted with each other to amplify the story and deepen my engagement

I loved that Eleanor Dash had three faces: Eleanor as herself, Eleanor as a curated version of herself with more agency and Eleanor as the author of this novel who is putting her character through hell.

I also liked that I didn’t get the Guide Book version of Italy, which typically sells Amalfi, Capri and Ravello as glamorous locations. I know those places and I was pleased to see that Capri was presented as choked with tourists, Amalfi looked a little shabby and Ravello was presented as a pretty place to be as long as you were prepared to take your life in your hands driving the coastal cliff road to get there.

There were three things about the book that didn’t work for me. Firstly, the audiobook didn’t handle the footnotes or the publishing-related materials well so I switched to a Kindle version before the end of Chapter 2. Secondly, thought that Tucci, the Italian Policeman in charge of investigating the murders was too incompetent to be believable. Finally, I didn’t enjoy the epilogue. It felt soggy and unnecessary. obook

Even so, ‘Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone DIes‘ was a four-star read for me, It was entertaining and stimulating and I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the Vacation Mystery series.

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