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4.0 

A Vacation to Kill For

By Eunice Mays Boyd & Elizabeth Reed Aden
A Vacation to Kill For by Eunice Mays Boyd & Elizabeth Reed Aden digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

When Olive Wallace offers to take several friends and relatives on a once-in-a-lifetime bus tour through post-WWII Europe, they all jump at the chance-even though Olive can be petty, demanding, and judgmental. But do they really care about seeing the wonders of Europe-the magnificent Roman temples and the majesty of Carcassonne, an ancient, fortified city in southern France-or are they just trying to stay in Olive's good graces?

 

Olive Wallace, after all, is extremely wealthy. And she is extremely outspoken about who she intends to leave her money to-or not leave it to-when she dies. Olive changes her will on a whim, and every person on the trip knows it.


On a bridge near Avignon, Olive is accidentally bumped into the river-or was she pushed? Days later, she is suspiciously nudged down the steps at the Nimes Colosseum. When Olive suffers a third accident in the narrow cobblestone streets of Carcassonne, she becomes convinced that somebody-one of her closest friends, perhaps-is out to murder her!

3 Reviews

4.0
“Olive has a lot of money that is going into her will, and she can’t decide who might get what. So, she takes a ragtag cast of characters to France, hoping to determine who is worthy of her fortune. Throughout the trip, her will is altered based on who she thinks is trying to actively end her life. This is a short, cozy mystery. While it includes many of the components we anticipate when opening a murder mystery, it lacks intrigue and seems rushed and slightly unorganized at times. It gets the job done, and we do find out who was trying to send Olive to meet her maker. There are so many characters, it was difficult to keep them organized while reading, and eventually felt like an unsolvable puzzle of people. The most frustrating part of the story was that we never find out who gets what in Olive’s will. It’s not a terrible story, and it’s short enough that it can be read in one sitting, allowing for some instant gratification. That’s always a bonus.”
“This book was so enjoyable from the beginning to the end. Olive Wallace invites her relatives, friends, hires a driver and a tour director to take them on a trip through parts of France. Olive is wealthy, footing the bill for everything and constantly changing her will adding and leaving out these fellow travelers. A series of “accidents” occur putting Olive’s life in danger. This book has an Agatha Christie atmosphere to it. It kept me guessing to the end (like a good murder mystery should). And no, I did not guess the ending!”

About Eunice Mays Boyd

Eunice was an award-winning mystery writer during the Golden Age of Agatha Christie. Her books are intelligent, cozy whodunnit murder mysteries with many twists and turns. She loved to read mysteries and prided herself in identifying the murderer well before the end. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1924, she moved to Alaska where she lived for 12 years. Circa 1940, she returned to Berkeley where she wrote the Alaska-based F. Millard Smyth mystery series: MURDER BREAKS TRAIL (1943), DOOM IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN (1943), and MURDER WEARS MUKLUKS (1945). These will be republished in 2022. A fourth book in the series, ONE PAW WAS RED will be forthcoming (2022/2023). She co-authored THE MARBLE FOREST that was made into the movie "Macabre" (1958). Her new cozy murder mysteries are: DUNE HOUSE (11/23/2021), SLAY BELLS (12/7/21) and A VACATION TO KILL FOR (2022). These books are published with her goddaughter, Elizabeth Reed Aden. DUNE HOUSE and SLAY BELLS are set in San Francisco, California and A VACATION TO KILL FOR is set primarily in Carcassonne, France.

Elizabeth Reed Aden

Betsy holds a doctorate degree in anthropology and has held senior executive management positions in pharmaceutical and biotech companies. She was inspired to write her own medical thriller, THE GOLDILOCKS GENOME (2023), by Eunice. She is finalizing a memoir, HEPATITIS Beach (2023/2025), about her adventures as a biomedical anthropologist living on a remote island in Melanesia where she studied the epidemiology of hepatitis B virus and how this sojourn affected her life and career. Betsy treasured and guarded the draft of A VACATION TO DIE FOR which she was given when Eunice died. In 2017 she discovered three boxes containing DUNE HOUSE, SLAY BELLS AND ONE PAW WAS RED. Eunice was an important person in her life and she is proud that she is able to share Eunice's intelligent, cleverly constructed murder mysteries from the Golden Age.

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