Getaway

March 12, 2012
Brackmann follows up her debut, Rock Paper Tiger, an Amazon Best Book of 2010, with a sinister tale of a vacation gone bad. After Michelle Mason’s L.A. real estate husband dies suddenly and leaves her in the financial lurch, Michelle travels to Puerto Vallarta to unwind and take a break from her stateside woes. There she meets Daniel, a handsome private pilot who’s part of Puerto Vallarta’s thriving ex-pat community. Danny appears to be the perfect candidate for a vacation fling, until Michelle and Danny are attacked in her hotel room. When she tries to leave Mexico a few days later, she’s stopped by police, who conveniently find cocaine in her bag. Bailed out by Gary, a fellow American and a so-called friend of Danny’s, Michelle finds herself stuck in Mexico without a passport—and forced to spy on Danny as she’s drawn into a labyrinth of drug dealers and power struggles that crisscross borders. Puerto Vallarta provides a lush backdrop for Brackmann’s richly drawn ex-pat world, which is as eccentric as it is dangerous. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown.

April 1, 2012
Brackmann (Rock Paper Tiger, 2010) returns with a thriller set in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta. Michelle, who has lost both her husband and her financial foothold, meets a handsome stranger, Daniel, while she's on vacation in Puerto Vallarta. But when that stranger turns out not to be the man he seems to be, Michelle finds herself stuck in a terrible state of deja vu: Her late husband, Tom, left her deep in debt and wondering how she could have been married to a man who could sustain so many lies. After two men break into Michelle's hotel room and beat Daniel, sending him to the hospital, Michelle discovers their phones have been switched. She tracks Daniel after finding his friends at their local hangout and stumbles into a frightening situation that Daniel attributes to his friend Gary's odd sense of humor. When Michelle attempts to leave Mexico behind and return to California and what remains of her life, she finds herself in a Mexican jail on a trumped-up charge of drug possession. Soon, Michelle finds that few in the expatriate community of Puerto Vallarta are really who or what they have pretended to be, and her world has now been diminished to a single objective: Get out of Mexico alive. Brackmann paints Michelle as a woman who has spent most of her life taking Pilates classes and decorating her upper middleclass home only to find that her husband was a complete fake. Unable to see much of a future for herself, she's suddenly thrust into a world where brutal drug dealers rule and fear is her everyday companion. Caught between two men and unsure which one is the bad guy and which one is the good guy, or even if there is a good guy, the author offers a darkly plausible plot that might make readers think twice about making casual acquaintances on holidays. Brackmann strikes exactly the right mood in this frantic look at an ordinary woman who can't seem to claw her way out of the mess in which she's managed to land.

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June 1, 2012

On vacation in the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta, newly widowed Michelle Mason has a fling with a good-looking stranger named Daniel. But after Daniel is attacked in her room and she is arrested for drug possession, Michelle quickly realizes that her holiday romance is turning into a nightmare. Her only option is to locate Daniel and hope he can help her find a way out of this mess before it is too late. VERDICT The ideal staycation thriller for armchair travelers from the author of the best-selling Rock Paper Tiger.

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