This series is just the ticket for armchair travelers who enjoy traditional mysteries, the amateur detective, Lana, is a former investigative journalist, blacklisted after an expose turned in a career ending disaster who re-invents herself as a tour guide for Wanderlust Tours. She enjoys the travel, the people and the perks but things don’t always follow the itinerary. In this Mother and Daughter themed Mother’s Day tour to Amsterdam the first surprise is when Lana’s estranged mother joins the tour and events go downhill from there.
This mystery showcases the little-known sights of Amsterdam with the well-known getting a nod and features some re-occurring travelers this time accompanied by their daughters. The mother and daughter relationships make this plot unique because of the variety of them!
These are not Hallmark movie mother daughter relationships, the most obnoxious is the demanding recently retired CEO accompanied by her subservient daughter and the fawning writer working on her biography. Another toxic mother daughter combo is the bitter mom and her Instagram obsessed daughter marketing her jewelry line who pursues friendships for the marketing potential. The common theme in all of them is the generational effects of the career mother and her millennial daughter and how that played out as role model mom and their personal relationship and and values.
When the Seattle CEO plunges from a windmill the tensions ratchet up when the accident is investigated as a homicide. Revelations about the CEO and the negative impact her company had on many of the tour members provides a lot of suspects, some hidden and some more obvious. I suspected the culprit and motivation early on since it is a familiar plot device in mysteries but still enjoyed the story because of the characters and the scenery. It has some twists and turns and some true suspense in a few scenes and the solution, not neat and tidy, but messy and sad is rescued by a bit of justified retribution for Lana which I can cheer for.
I rate this mystery 3 handbags and a bunch of tulips using elements from the story!
Plot: **
Characters: ***
Setting: ****
Romance: **
Humor: ***
Social themes: ***
