Take a Vacation: A Guest Post by Laura Lippman

Devilishly clever and powered by a charming protagonist, this cozy caper through Paris is a fun and fruitful mystery with the perfect blend of playful and propulsive. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Laura Lippman on writing Murder Takes a Vacation.

Murder Takes a Vacation — and so did I!

I have set almost every book I’ve written in or around my hometown of Baltimore. But in the winter of 2023, when I began the book that would become Murder Takes a Vacation, I needed to get away – not so much from my beloved hometown, but from the nasty people who had populated my last two books. (Three, if you include my collection of personal essays – and some people probably do.) I wanted to spend time with someone admirable, and I found that person in Mrs. Blossom, a minor character in the Tess Monaghan novels.

As a foil to Tess, Mrs. Blossom often provided comic relief, along with some excellent surveillance work. (Although she dresses in bright flower prints, she has the older woman’s uncanny ability to be invisible much of the time.) She was, as I had hoped, excellent company when placed at the center of the story – open to new experiences, curious and considerate, profoundly empathetic.

Mrs. Blossom and I are very different. She is modest; I am bold. She had never worked out of the home; I have been almost pathologically careerist. But as we spent time together – and writing a book about a character is very similar to going on a long cruise with someone – I came to see how much we had in common. Mrs. Blossom is a widow, who isn’t sure what to do with herself now that she is no longer needed as a caretaker to her granddaughters. I’m a single mom, a little surprised to no longer be married, even more surprised by how happy I am. We were both reinventing our lives – and decorating new apartments.

We also share a passion for art, specifically the vibrant work of Joan Mitchell, whom we both discovered the same way, in a show at the Baltimore Museum of Art. I’m not quite as sentimental as Mrs. Blossom, so I didn’t shed a surreptitious tear upon seeing Mitchell’s work, but it did make me realize that life was a canvas and I wanted to fill mine with as much beauty as I can find.

Will Mrs. Blossom and I travel together again? Let’s just say I’ve already suggested a few itineraries and we are mulling the possibilities.