Lead Review (Bad Tourists)

• Book: Bad Tourists
• Location: The Maldives
• Author: Caro Carver

Review Author: tripfiction

3.5*

For so many years, the Maldives were overlooked by authors in their choice of setting. But the 2020s mark a turn in the tide and now there are innumerable novels set in this beautiful part of the world, a perfect location for dark deeds.

Kate, Darcy and Camilla have met through a terrible event that happened on 10 September 2001, a date that became overshadowed by the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.  Darcy is in the process of getting a divorce and she decides to pay tens of thousands of pounds to take the group for a luxury holiday on the Maldives, all expenses paid. They are very different women, yet their experience in 2001 bonds them in a singular way. They will be on the island on the 22nd anniversary of the event (which is described in the opening chapter, so it probably isn’t a spoiler to say that each woman is somehow connected to a massacre that took place in Dover).

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One of them is a survivor of the Dover event, the only person spared in the whole gruesome interlude and each year, on the anniversary, she receives a bunch of roses. And even on the Maldives, she receives a floral delivery which naturally really floors her.

They happen to bump into Jade, who is on her honeymoon but she seems to be a fragile young woman who is hitched to a man, who is body aware – all rippling muscles – and has a terrible temper, which is evident given the bruising on Jade’s face. The women are tempted to intervene but then death descends and discoveries are made and the whole trip takes on an even darker feel.

I enjoyed the fast pace of the story and bonding between the three women but there were perhaps some elements that felt absurd and were clearly devices to make connections and move the narrative on, which could at times make the trajectory feels stilted. Darcy’s young son Charlie has an influence on proceedings – he’s a sharp one – and at the 5* resort the faulty door (that won’t lock) in a villa is reported but takes an age to fix, giving ample opportunity for interlopers and earwiggers. There are fairly preposterous deductions and motivations but the whole premise works as a destination thriller and if you fancy being transported to a Maldivian island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, then this is one to pick up.

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