Mayan Murder

Martha Brack Martin ‘sMayan Murder offers another adventure for Tom and Kat who first appeared in River Traffic. (Vol. XXIII, No. 14, December 9, 2016) The two are arriving on separate flights to Cancun. Kat and her FBI agent dad, Mike, have invited Tom to join them for spring break vacation at a resort on the Mayan Riviera. Tom notices a fellow traveler, a man in a red shirt, who goes through all his travel points with him, but who seems to arrive with more luggage than he checked in with. Though Mike is off-duty, he is pulled aside at security when in Cancun. Tom and Kat are interested in going to a music festival, something which Mike nixes because of drugs and rioting at a recent similar event. A couple of days later, they have lunch with Roberto, a Mexican police officer who had been to a shared training program with Mike. They also meet Alex, an attractive single woman, a teacher from Virginia. Kat is keen to set Alex up with her dad (Kat’s mother died several years before). Two young men on the staff stand out to Tom: Pedro, who interrupts Tom kissing Kat to ask her/them to play water polo, and Antonio, who works at the marina and has a grandfather who works as a boat guide. Tom finds Pedro annoying but clicks with Antonio, perhaps because his own family runs a small marina on the Detroit River. On another day, Alex and Kat go shopping, Mike goes to play golf with Roberto, and Tom helps out on a cruise on one of the marina boats where he again sees the man in the red shirt. Mike is shot, and Alex and Kat rush to meet him at the hospital. Tom hears of the kidnapping of the young daughter of a police officer, and he later sees a girl fitting the description on a boat at the marina and rescues her. He and the girl, Amelia, are chased by the kidnappers and end up joining a tour bus to a nearby ruin near a lagoon frequented by sea turtles. Tom calls Kat, Roberto, and Antonio for help, and Amelia calls her father who recommends that they hide at a market booth owned by one of his informants. The kidnappers show up and shoot the owner of the booth. It seems Roberto is the local head of the drug cartels that are trying to enter the Cancun area. He is in charge of the kidnappers, and they drag Tom and Amelia down to their boat in the lagoon. Antonio and his grandfather and other local boat owners help to effect a rescue. Tom’s father has arrived from home, Amelia is restored to her family, and Mike is recovering well. The man in the red shirt turns out to be a security consultant from the Detroit area who was called in to help with security for the music festival. He offers Tom a job when he is older. Order is restored.

Mayan Murder is Martin’s second entry in the “Orca Soundings” series. Judging by this book, she has a talent for this style of writing. She is successful in creating atmosphere with just a few words while skillfully adding just enough red herrings to her plot to keep readers uncertain as to whom the villain really is. The action is fast-paced and well-described. The main character seems intelligent, brave and resourceful.

My only quibble is that the action is not shared equally between Tom and Kat. She sits at the hospital waiting to hear about her father’s condition while he finds and rescues the kidnapped girl. There is really no mystery to discuss and resolve. Tom has suspicions about the man in the red shirt, the heavies on the boat, and even Alex, the school teacher from Virginia because she speaks Spanish so well. It is just luck, however, that he is at the marina at the right time to see and rescue Amelia. For a longer novel, more mystery and following of clues would be required, but, for this format, Mayan Murder is a slick entry.