Hy Conrad

There is nothing I love more than a good, train-based mystery; unfortunately, this book isn’t very good, and very little of the action takes place on the train.

Professional travel agent, Amy, has a problem—two problems, actually: a lying, manipulative mother (appropriately named Fanny), who lives vicariously through her daughter, and a lying, manipulative boyfriend called Marcus, who is often in cahoots with Fanny. Fanny writes a flamboyant blog called TrippyGirl in which she chronicles Amy’s travel adventures…sort of, but not really. All of TrippyGirl’s exploits center around embellished accounts of Amy’s travels, but Amy isn’t TrippyGirl…well, sort of, but not really because TrippyGirl doesn’t actually exist—even though she looks exactly like Amy. Is that clear? Well, even if it isn’t, by the end of this book you won’t care anyway.

In Death on the Patagonian Express, Fanny cons Amy into accepting an invitation from a swarthy South American, Jorge O’Bannion, to embark on the maiden voyage of his new venture, the Patagonian Express—a luxury train tour of Patagonian dude ranches. Against Amy’s wishes, Fanny manages to foist herself on this excursion as well.

Once in South America, we are introduced to Amy’s traveling companions—fellow travel agents and competitive travel writers. In a shadowy tango bar, we are also introduced to Jorge’s reclusive and unique-looking business partner, Lola Pisano, who seems to be providing most of the financial backing for Jorge’s speculative business venture.

From the onset, the trip is plagued by a series of accidents which cause a lot of delays and results in their experienced tour guide Pablo being replaced by the lackluster Nicolas who doesn’t seem to know too much about anything—particularly about guiding tours.

During a wilderness excursion, Fanny discovers a body which promptly disappears before anyone else can see it. Did she really uncover a dead body, or is this just another one of her many lies designed to further the allure of her TrippyGirl blog? As the trip winds on, Fanny comes to believe the dead body was actually a vision of a murder yet to come. When a dead body is eventually discovered, everyone seems to accept the death as accidental. However, Amy is convinced it was murder and she sets out to uncover the culprit.

Throughout the journey, Fanny is habitually lying and manipulating Amy into miserable and sometimes dangerous situations. Meanwhile, back in New York, Marcus is lying to Amy about everything from his job, to his search for an apartment, to his interactions with her publisher.

We also get a couple of uninteresting subplots about a maniacal South American general and TrippyGirl’s struggles to get a travel book published.

Ultimately, Amy solves the case; although that is not terribly impressive since the murder victim, the motive, and the murderer are all glaringly obvious from the get-go. It’s all pretty boring and predictable.

The only genuine mystery is why Amy continues to put up with all of the crap dished out by her domineering fool of a mother and her pathetic louse of a boyfriend.… (lisätietoja)

#130

Amy's mother writes a very popular travel blog "Trippy.Girl" recounting Amy's travels & her encounters w/ murderers & near death experiences.

When Jorge O'Bannion offers them a trip to Argentina, so they may help resurrect his father's dream of reviving the family's estancia (estate) & the New Patagonia Express, which he hopes will become the newest tourist destination; they have no idea they will stumble into a murderous situation.

The plot/premise was a good one, however (you knew there had to be a however), I didn't like the characters; Amy's mother was manipulative, her boyfriend was a serial liar, and she was rather bumbling.

I skipped most of the book after the 3rd chapter to read the finale.... I didn't find it well written but I did find it almost as boring as the rest of the book.… (lisätietoja)