Getaway by Lisa Brackmann

Getaway by Lisa Brackmann

I read this because of the CrimeReads website and Goodreads.
CrimeReads mentioned another Lisa Brackmann novel, Go-Between, that I thought sounded interesting. Looking that up on Goodreads had me reading others saying “. . .read Getaway first so you know about Gary. . .”

Getaway is set in Mexico and coincidentally I sit in Mexico.
The novel is set in a beach town Puerto Vallarta, I’m in a completely different place in a small mountain city.
Michelle Mason is there after her husband’s death. They were going to go together except that he died. So she went on her own. We get pieces of her backstory throughout. It is basically that she was a married woman with a businessman husband. He had difficulties and left them broke right before he died. She trusted him and didn’t know.
That is kind of an unstated but shown message of the novel: “These men want women to trust them and go along, but they put a woman in danger with their big secret schemes.”

Michelle meets a gringo man and they hook up, but on that very night something happens and ultimately she is caught in the precarious middle of a conflict between two gringo men.

Drug smugglers? CIA? Michelle is kept out of the loop of what is really going on yet risking her life in the meantime. So like her days with hubby in LA this is Big Important Business that the men are involved with and “you don’t need to know right now. It will be OK.” Will it?

Getaway is an excellent crime novel. It’s a genuine page-turner.
Lisa Brackman is a writer who knows what is going on. That is clear because there are some passages about the Drug War and Iran-Contra. She states the facts in passing, in case someone doesn’t know, without preaching.

So now I know about “Fucking Gary” and can read Go-Between. I hope is it as 

good.