Death on Tour

By Janice Hamrick

Hardcover, 310 pages, $24.99

When I take a magical mystery tour, I usually stay inside the confines of the U.S., but when ‘Death on Tour’ arrived at my doorstep, I decided to expand my reading borders.

Wow, I’m sure glad I did, because this title, which won a first crime novel award from the Mystery Writers of America, was such fun, so fast-paced, and involved such great characters, that I was hard pressed to put it down.

I adored the adventures of Jocelyn Shore, a Texas High School teacher, and her cousin, Kyla, during their trip to Egypt for a once-in-a-lifetime tour of the great pyramids. You’ll laugh out loud at the dialogue and wonder if perhaps a trip like this should go on your bucket list.

Readers will enjoy Jocelyn’s dilemmas and deliberations as she tries to figure out why an annoying old lady tourist in her group winds up dead.

“The body lay facedown in the sand beside the giant stone blocks of the great pyramid of Khafre,” the book begins. Talk about an opener, eh?

“Our tour group stood huddled together in a little knot a few yards from a brightly colored heap of clothes that had once been Millie Owens,” the story continues.

Pyramids, mummies, the Nile, are all part of the WorldPal tour package, but that’s not all the tour group encounters while looking for the pink Hello Kitty umbrella that serves as a gathering point for the large group of tourists.

There’s a developing romance, a mysterious teen-ager, sights, smells and tastes of Egypt, all beautifully brought together by new author Janice Hamrick.

From camel rides across the dessert, to the frantic pursuit of the local merchants, you’ll travel through Egypt on a marvelous carpet ride of great storytelling and you won’t have to “scrimp on everything for two years, right down to the shampoo (you) used and the brand of peanut butter (you) chose, so (you) could save just enough from (your) teacher’s salary to cover this trip.”

And, you won’t have to mark anything other than the page you are on while reading while taking this tour. But perhaps you’ve taken a bus tour where seating arrangements are very important. “When first boarding, everyone immediately and inevitably marks their territory by placing some belonging on the seat or overhead.”

But you can kick back and vicarious enjoy “the brilliant light that was finally softening into a mellow afternoon where the shadows yawned and stretched gracefully across the lawns like tired cats.”

Or, enjoying the visual of The Nile that looked like a great green ribbon winding gracefully across the vast barren waste of the Sahara.”

And try to figure out who, among the group, is a thief and possibly a smuggler. And if two deaths, one of an American tourist and the second a local shop keeper, committed 100 miles apart, are actually related.

There’s history. There’s humor. This is a humdinger that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Be sure to pick up ‘Death on Tour’ as a great summer read for those upcoming hot and humid days of summer. You’ll be feel right at home with the tour group.

Lisa Allmendinger is a regional reporter for AnnArbor.com. She can be reached at lisaallmendinger@annarbor.com. In addition, each Wednesday she reviews a cozy mystery in her column called “Cozy Corner.”