Review: entertaining start to a new series.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 3, 2014
The Travel Writer by Jeff Soloway is a recommended debut mystery series featuring Jacob Smalls as a smart aleck travel guide writer turned sleuth. When veteran American travel editor Hilary Pearson is missing and presumed kidnapped from the Matamoros, a Bolivian Hotel,  Pilar Rojas, the PR agent and an old friend of Smalls contacts him. Pilar offers Smalls an all-expense paid trip to the Bolivian resort if he will just write a complementary piece about the hotel.Smalls admits, "I’m a travel writer, and corrupt as they come. I’d sell my journalistic principles for two nights at the Four Seasons with a free meal and a massage. I’ve been wheedled and bribed and plied with bottles of wine worth more than my laptop, and I’ve rarely failed to succumb to the temptation of providing a puff review. But I was not entirely without ambition. That afternoon I had for the first time inspired hate, not just disdain, from a hotel employee—if that’s what Gonzales was. I had stumbled onto something, perhaps a crime worth uncovering, or at least a story worth writing about." (Location 142)All Pilar wants is a shill to write the pro-Matamoros propaganda piece, but Smalls decides to investigate Hilary's disappearance with some help from Kenny,  a goofy, naive co-worker of Hilary's who is sure they have a relationship. Smalls is a rather hapless, but clever narrator who displays plenty of self-deprecating humor and some interesting descriptions and outlooks on life. He's hardly anyone's first choice for an investigator. “What makes you think you can find her?” she asked. “The FBI couldn’t. You’re just a guidebook writer.” Guidebook writers are the peasantry of travel writers. Apparently my magazine work hadn’t caught Lisa’s attention, which wasn’t surprising. It hadn’t caught anyone else’s." (Location 323)While the actual plot isn't full of suspense or intrigue, the beauty and fun in Soloway's debut novel is in his laugh aloud descriptions:"I slipped the clerk my passport, and he hammered my name, two-fingered, into his computer keyboard, pausing for one heartbeat between each letter, perhaps to facilitate the computer’s comprehension of the outlandish 'Jacob Smalls.'"Or  "Her placid eyes widened in respect, as if she’d been told he owned a unicorn."The Travel Writer is an entertaining start to a new series. I laughed along with Smarts and liked him. Now let's hope he has a more intriguing, tough mystery/crime to solve in his next outing.Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House via Netgalley for review purposes.