Murder Takes a Vacation

Murder Takes a Vacation, a 2025 mystery novel by Laura Lippman, follows 68-year-old Baltimore widow Muriel Blossom on a picturesque—and perilous—cruise on the River Seine, where she encounters art thieves, smugglers, murderers, and the disquieting ghosts of a troubled past. Lippman’s entry in the cozy mystery genre combines romance, suspense, comedy, noir, and travelogue while exploring themes including The Impact of Societal Prejudices on Self-Worth, Reclaiming Identity and Agency in Later Life, and The Power of Subverting Expectations. Lippman’s 28th novel, Murder Takes a Vacation, made the New York Times “The Best Beach Reads of Summer” and the Washington Post “Best Mysteries to Read this Summer.”

The guide refers to the 2025 William Morrow hardcover edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of substance use, emotional abuse, physical abuse, disordered eating, ableism, gender discrimination, and death.

Plot Summary

Muriel Blossom, a widow in her late sixties, arrives at a Maryland airport for her first transatlantic flight. She plans to fly to Paris via London, then meet up with her childhood friend Elinor for a weeklong Seine cruise. She can afford this vacation only because she recently found, in a convenience store parking lot, a lottery ticket worth almost $9 million.

Flustered by the maze-like airport, Mrs. Blossom welcomes the assistance of Allan Turner, a handsome man her own age. He offers to guide her, since he’s an experienced traveler who is on her flight to London. To ease her jet lag, he gives her a “melatonin gummy” to swallow and a full vial of gummies to use on her vacation. The first gummy leaves her very drowsy, and when they reach London, he tells her it’s too late to catch her connecting flight to Paris. 

Suggesting she take a hotel room and ride the Chunnel train to Paris the next day, Allan shows her around London, and in the evening, comes up to her hotel room for a “night cap.” The two of them kiss passionately, which makes Mrs. Blossom feel a little guilty, since her husband, Harold, who died 10 years ago, was the love of her life. Still, she finds the experience both thrilling and flattering, since, at 68 years of age, she feels mostly “invisible” to other people, especially men.

Allan is still in her room when she drifts off to sleep. After her exhausting day, she felt no need for any of the sleep aids Allan gave her; in fact, to avoid questions from the customs staff, she emptied the gummies into a secret compartment of her pill box, also her hiding place for her diamond earrings. 

The next day, on the Chunnel train to Paris, she notices a stylishly dressed man staring at her. Later in Paris, she sees the same man sitting near her at a restaurant and confronts him. He claims to be Danny Johnson, a professional stylist, and says he was drawn to her out of pity for her unflattering wardrobe. Offering to take her shopping, he follows her to her hotel, where the police are waiting for her: Allan Turner has been killed in an accidental fall from his Paris hotel balcony. 

Mrs. Blossom is mystified, since Allan told her he was staying in London; even odder, the police tell her that shortly before his death, Allan texted her name, photograph, and hotel address to an unknown person with the cryptic message, “A very nice lady, she has your eyes” (44). Danny suggests that Allan might have been trying to use her as a “mule” to smuggle contraband. Mrs. Blossom scoffs at this since she brought only one bag and would have noticed if Allan planted something in it.

The next day, Mrs. Blossom allows Danny to get her fitted for a new wardrobe by Cece, a designer friend of his. Returning to her hotel, however, she finds that her room has been searched. She becomes increasingly suspicious of Danny, who seems to be having her followed. 

The next day, Danny tells her he is an FBI agent on the trail of a stolen antiquity from Pakistan, a statue of a phoenix-like bird known as a Quqnoz. Allan, he says, was bringing the statue to London to sell to a Pakistani billionaire, not knowing that the scenario was a sting operation concocted by Danny and the FBI. For some reason, however, Allan canceled the meeting with the “billionaire” and followed Mrs. Blossom to Paris. Then he died in a suspicious accident, and the Quqnoz was not found among his things. 

Danny wonders if Allan might have hidden it in her luggage to smuggle it out of the US. Mrs. Blossom laughs, saying she would have noticed, but when she mentions to Danny that her hotel room was searched, he looks panicked. He notes that someone else must be on her trail—maybe the mysterious person to whom Allan sent her name and photo.

On the Seine cruise, Mrs. Blossom and her childhood friend Elinor are given a stateroom with its own balcony. To her annoyance, Danny appears on the cruise, claiming he’s just there for pleasure. After this encounter Mrs. Blossom meetings an attractive man named Paul, and Elinor encourages her to begin a “flirtation” with him. Later at dinner, Elinor introduces Mrs. Blossom to Marko, her own attractive man with whom she plans to have a “flirtation.” The next day, while lounging on the upper deck, Mrs. Blossom meets an elderly, aristocratic woman. Her name is Pat Siemens, and Mrs. Blossom soon learns that she is Marko’s sister.

On a day trip with Danny to a picturesque locale, Mrs. Blossom’s purse is almost stolen in an attack that leaves her bruised and shaken. Suspicious of Danny, she demands to see his FBI identification. He changes his story again, claiming to be an insurance company investigator. He claims that the company paid out millions to the owner of the Quqnoz when it was supposedly destroyed in a museum fire, but now, they believe it was stolen from the museum before the fire. 

Back on the ship, Mrs. Blossom calls her friend Tess Monaghan, a Baltimore private investigator for whom she has done surveillance work. Tess tells her that the museum’s owner, Constance Saylor, drowned in a lake in Switzerland about five years ago, long after the museum fire. The museum’s handyman was convicted of arson and died two months ago, shortly after his parole, in a “gas explosion.” Tess sends her a photo of Constance Saylor, a large woman, “miserable, hawk-nosed and beetle-browed” (157).

A couple of days later, Mrs. Blossom and Elinor discover that their stateroom has been searched. The next day, Pat Siemen publicly accuses Danny of coming into her room when she was napping and stealing her diamond ring. Danny denies it, but when his personal safe is opened, the ring is there, along with a pile of Swiss money and the Quqnoz. Danny is taken into custody, and the bird and money are placed in the ship’s vault until the staff can determine the owners. 

Mrs. Blossom remembers that the Quqnoz was supposed to have sapphire ornaments and wonders why the statue in Danny’s safe seemed to be of plain marble. A quick Google search tells her that some sapphires are salmon-colored—the same color as the “melatonin gummies” Allan gave her. Opening her pill box’s secret compartment, she discovers that seven of the gummies are actually jewels. Allan used her to smuggle them through customs and was unable to steal them back in London because she hid them so well.

Hearing a knock on her door, she slips the sapphires into her pocket. It is Pat Siemen, and Mrs. Blossom invites her out onto the balcony for a visit. Shortly thereafter, Marko arrives with an intoxicated Elinor. Suddenly, Pat demands that Mrs. Blossom hand over the sapphires, which she says are her property. Marko, forcing Elinor toward the balcony’s edge, says that he and Pat need the jewels in order to sell the Quqnoz statue for the highest price. 

Mrs. Blossom realizes that Pat is actually Constance Saylor, the Quqnoz’s original owner. “Pat” admits that she faked her death to avoid insurance fraud charges after her museum burned down. Mrs. Blossom realizes that once Marko gets the sapphires, he will kill her and Elinor. Telling him the sapphires are in her pill box, she opens it, then quickly dumps the contents—the melatonin gummies and her diamond earrings—into the river. When Marko lunges toward the railing, Mrs. Blossom throws herself against him, knocking him off the balcony and into the ocean.

Pat and a soaking-wet Marko are taken into custody, and Mrs. Blossom hands the sapphires over to Danny, who actually is an FBI agent, though he has been working this case without the bureau’s knowledge. His father, he tells her, was Pat’s handyman, who burned down the museum at her instruction. However, he stole the Quqnoz and kept it hidden during his prison sentence. 

Upon discovering this, Danny set up a sting operation to seize the Quqnoz from his father’s accomplice, Pat’s lawyer Allan Turner, and return it to Pakistan. His father greedily tried to start a bidding war between the imaginary buyer and Pat Siemen, which led to Marko murdering both him and Allan. Marko, who knew from Allan that Mrs. Blossom had the Quqnoz’s “eyes” (the sapphire ornaments), searched her Paris hotel room and then her stateroom. He romanced Elinor to get access to their stateroom and finally used her as a hostage. 

Later, Mrs. Blossom learns from Pat that Marko is not Pat’s brother but her lover, a man with very expensive tastes. All the criminality, she says, was his idea, to support his lavish lifestyle. She did everything he asked, thinking she couldn’t live without him—even though he was shallow, selfish, and physically abusive. Returning home to Baltimore, Mrs. Blossom pities Pat for throwing her life away on such a violent, worthless man.