A tense, character-driven mystery in the Puerto Vallarta expat community
Puerto Vallarta is popular with American tourists and expatriates, which keeps its US consulate busy. For Consul Amanda Pennyworth, it’s practically bureaucratic bliss, but it also poses a dilemma. “She had become so comfortable here. And that, of course, was exactly what the State Department, in its perverse wisdom, was determined to prevent.”
If she declines her next assignment in less-idyllic Lebanon, it’s a risk to career advancement. Her stress is compounded by the arrival of a large film crew for an extended shoot. Amanda’s enchanted by Hollywood glamor and the possibility of hobnobbing with stars, so she likes that her superior, the ambassador in Mexico City, endorses her to act as liaison between the studio and the local community. This includes facilitating recruitment of locals for extras, including expats.
However, one of those hired expats is brutally murdered on a beach near the shoot. He’s an American citizen, so it ties her to the investigation. This also means she must contend with Tourist Police Commander Gonzalez, not her biggest fan. Thankfully, Gonzalez delegates the case to Sergeant Perez, but it doesn’t take long for the commander’s impatience to push for a hasty resolution over an actual solution.
Still, Gonzalez may not be as bad as the officious film representative, Max Sperling, after links are found between the victim and those working on the film. Max says the visiting Americans could have nothing to do with the murder of anyone fitting this generalization given by another expat: “‘Scratch any one of us and you’ll uncover a small pension and an insufficient bank account. A lot better, though, than living in a trailer park in North Carolina!’”
A second murder weakens Max’s argument but not enough to make it easier for Amanda and Perez to access witnesses or persons of interest. This resistance compels Amanda to be more resourceful in applying her creative intelligence and local familiarity to identify the culprit, but she needs to do so before the film crew returns to California.
Told entirely from Amanda’s perspective, this story sees her settled in Puerto Vallarta by now, but she still retains a fresh, romanticized admiration of this coastal city and its citizens. It’s interesting how that contrasts the ugliness of the crimes, never mind the pettiness she faces solving them. The setting plays an active role in Murder on the Set.
This novel is as much about Amanda’s character as the mystery itself: how she handles the dichotomies around her and how she delicately navigates disobliging stakeholders like Max and Gonzalez. Her tendency to be deferential with authoritative types might seem like a weakness but can prove beneficial to honing an essential quality for her line of work: diplomatic tact.
While the focus on Amanda’s life and character augments the murder mystery, it can distract from that story. Perhaps a little less of Amanda’s contemplations would allow more to be made of the visitors from Hollywood. A film crew could be rife with ego and interpersonal conflict, minable not only for more dramatic color but also strategic misdirection, but sometimes it feels like we spend too much time on other things.
That said, Murder on the Set capitalizes on its subtly ingenious premise. It enmeshes Amanda into the crime without any semblance of feeling contrived, which allows her personality to shine through and allows enough latitude for her sleuthing skills to blossom. And as they do, Amanda Pennyworth shows potential to be a distinctly memorable figure in the mystery genre.
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