Getaway by Lisa Brackmann, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Michelle Mason is looking to escape … from the memory of her disgraced, and now dead, husband but mostly from the creditors looking for cash that simply is not there. A long planned pre-paid vacation to Puerto Vallarta seems just the ticket and Michelle is just beginning to think she can handle her new life back in the US … and then she meets the enigmatic Daniel in Getaway, a stand-alone thriller by Lisa Brackmann.

Daniel tells Michelle he is a corporate charter pilot, with a vacation home in the area. Their late night supper leads to a romantic interlude back in her hotel, which is interrupted by two masked men, who knock Daniel unconscious and make unspoken threats to her before leaving. The police and paramedics arrive, the former questioning Michelle while the latter take Daniel to the hospital. The next day she discovers she has Daniel's smart phone, an identical model to her own, and makes her way to the hospital thinking that hers somehow mistakenly got taken by the paramedics as part of Daniel's possessions. But he's checked himself out, and is nowhere to be found. Remembering him mention a weekly get-together with friends at a local bar, she heads there to see if she can learn more about him — like his last name and where he lives —only to get drawn deeper into Daniel's mysterious life.

There's nothing original about the premise of an American tourist being trapped in a foreign country and having to use their wits and ingenuity to get them back home. So part of the interest in Getaway is simply wondering how the author is going to handle this frequently used — and frequently overused — outline for a book, and whether something new and fresh will be introduced. The short answer is by keeping the action moving forward so quickly that there isn't a lot of time for the reader to consider that this has all been said and done before. The Puerto Vallarta setting seems exotic and adds color, but Michelle, Daniel, and all of Daniel's friends and associates just seem like stock characters, nicely drawn but lacking any sort of distinctive features. Getaway is a fast read and well plotted for what it is, but it not really suspenseful — or memorable — in any meaningful way.

Hour of the Rat
Soho Crime (Hardcover), June 2013
ISBN-13: 9781616952341; ISBN-10: 1616952342