Death on Tour

February 28, 2011
A passport's not needed to enjoy Hamrick's ditzy debut, the first in a new cozy series and the winner of the 2010 Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel Competition. While Austin, Tex., high school teacher Jocelyn Shore and her fashionista cousin and best friend, Kyla Shore, are on an Egyptian tour, one of their group, unpopular 55-year-old Millie Owens, takes a fatal plunge off the great pyramid of Khafre outside Cairo. The police later determine that Millie was murdered, stabbed in the neck. Entries in a journal that Jocelyn finds in Millie's bag suggests someone on the tour might be dangerous. Good-looking Alan Stratton, who's traveling alone and wears no wedding ring, adds romantic interest. Hamrick does a good job capturing life on an exhausting budget tour as her snazzy if snarky amateur sleuth, who tends to be hard on the middle-aged and elderly, investigates some fishy fellow tourists with a hypercritical eye.

February 15, 2011

A high-school teacher's dream vacation becomes an unexpected mystery tour.

Jocelyn Shore and her cousin Kyla, who are often mistaken for sisters—a fact that annoys the stylish Kyla—are on a guided tour of Egypt with the usual mixed bag of travelers, ranging from the handsome Alan Stratton to the annoying Millie Owens. When Millie's found dead at the base of a pyramid, no one is exactly devastated, but her death turns out to be only the first in a series of mysterious and violent occurrences. Jocelyn becomes suspicious when the ubiquitous sellers of everything from fine carpets to tourist trinkets keep asking her if she is from Utah. Still, their WorldPal tour guide Anni is very knowledgeable and does a great job explaining the historic sites of Egypt and keeping her charges in line, even the two elderly sisters everyone thinks should have stayed home. Even when the cousins clash over Alan, whom they both find attractive, they enjoy the tour well enough to write off the odd incidents until Jocelyn is attacked in a darkened tomb and a merchant is found murdered in the same way as Millie. Jocelyn has all too little time to figure out why she is marked for trouble and which of her fellow travelers may be the troublemaker.

Hamrick's character-driven debut is a good mystery and a charming travelogue.

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May 1, 2011
As far as Jocelyn Shore is concerned, the only surprising thing about Millie Owens death is that someone didnt kill her sooner. Jocelyn is certain that every single person on the Worldpal package tour of Egypt imagined doing away with loud, gossipy, totally annoying Millie at least once, but to actually kill her does seem to take things a bit far. Surely rudeness isnt a reason for murder? Jocelyn soon discovers that almost all on the tour harbor secrets that they may well be willing to kill to keep. Hamricks debut mystery, which won the Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel Award, is an especially entertaining traditional amateur sleuth story. Hamrick expertly integrates the colorful Egyptian setting into the plot, flavors her writing with dry wit, and even adds a dash of sweet romance to create the kind of novel that may remind readers of the beloved romantic mysteries of Elizabeth Peters, such as The Jackals Head (1968) and The Seventh Sinner (1972).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)