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Drawn Into The Clash of Cultures
Murder on the Set centers around an amateur sleuth on a movie set in Puerto Vallarta as she dives headfirst into a double murder investigation. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Murder on the Set is the fourth book in the Amanda Pennyworth Mystery Series. I was inspired to use the idea of a visiting movie company when I recalled a very odd film, NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, based on a Tennessee Williams play and shot in Puerto Vallarta in the early 1960s. The invasion of Hollywood movie stars, a crew of extras, producers and directors was an enormously disruptive event and the perfect setting to stage a murder mystery. There was not only the expected glamour, but the possibility of writing about outsized personalities and the clash between the various cultures: tourists, American expats, local Mexicans, the police, and, of course, Amanda herself.
What do you think makes Amanda different from other mystery protagonists?
Amanda Pennyworth is different, I suppose, because she isn’t really a detective or even an amateur sleuth, but rather, someone who, because of her profession as American Consul to Puerto Vallarta, is inevitably drawn into the clash of cultures, and the troubles that Americans bring on themselves when they visit a foreign country. This means that she stands at the center of everything that happens, whether she wants to or not. What else makes her different is that she must answer to so many different voices: the Foreign Service, The American ambassador, the Expat Community, tourists, the local police, and, of course, to her own ambition.
How much research did you do into film production and Hollywood culture?
I tried to make sure that I understood the various functions of movie makers–the stars, writers, producers and directors and, of course, the extras. I also watched the old film Night of the Iguana, which gave me some ideas for names and characters.
Is there another installment of the Amanda Pennyworth Mystery Series planned? Where will it take readers?
Yes, there will be another Amanda Pennyworth Mystery forthcoming. Again, it will be set in Puerto Vallarta which seems to me to be the perfect situation to place a series that explores the clash of cultures and customs as well as the intrigues of a mystery.
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Almost immediately, an expat who volunteered as an extra on the film is brutally murdered. Then his wife is bludgeoned to death. The police are intimidated and baffled by the Hollywood crew, and Amanda is called upon to help find the killer.
But her own life is complicated: her assignment in this beautiful resort city is ending, and her next posting may be in a dangerous Middle Eastern zone. Everything is suddenly in turmoil. Amanda must catch the killer before he strikes again—and decide what path her career and future will take. All of her ingenuity and daring may not be enough.
Murder on the Set: An Amanda Pennyworth Mystery
James Gilbert’s Murder on the Set drops Amanda Pennyworth, American consul, amateur sleuth, and increasingly conflicted woman, into a Puerto Vallarta movie production that begins as a logistical nuisance and turns into a double-murder investigation. A Hollywood crew arrives to film a glossy romance on location, Amanda is pulled in to smooth relations between studio egos and local authorities, and the novel steadily tightens from social comedy into a mystery about performance, authorship, and the things people will do to protect an invented version of themselves. The setup is clever on its face, but what gave it lift for me was the way the book makes the film set feel both seductive and faintly toxic, all bright surfaces and hairline cracks.
What I liked most was the book’s sense of place. Puerto Vallarta is not a pasted-on backdrop here; it has weather, texture, sidewalks, petty irritations, good coffee, bureaucracy, sea air, gossip, and the faint shimmer of a life Amanda may not want to leave. That local fullness gives the novel ballast. I also liked Amanda herself. She is observant without turning brittle, competent without becoming superhuman, and her interior conflict about duty, desire, and departure gives the mystery a second pulse. The book is at its best when it lets the investigation move through social nuance, class signals, artistic vanity, diplomatic tact, and expat performance. There is a pleasingly old-fashioned intelligence to that.
The novel unfolds with a deliberate, almost courtly pace that lets the tension gather naturally, and I found that measured rhythm one of its strengths. Rather than chasing constant shocks, it rewards patience with richer atmosphere, sharper character work, and a deeper satisfaction as the story gradually comes into focus. Gilbert writes in a way that is more measured than trendy, and the book’s pleasures come from the sharpened dialogue, the sly observations, the metafictional wrinkle in the case itself, and the growing realization that this is a murder story about fabrication in more than one sense. By the end, I felt the book had earned its composure.
I’d hand this to readers of traditional mystery, cozy-adjacent mystery, international mystery, and murder mystery with literary elements, especially anyone who enjoys sleuthing mixed with atmosphere and character rather than nonstop mayhem. It reminded me a little of Donna Leon, if she wandered onto a film set in coastal Mexico, and readers who like Louise Penny’s interest in psychology over pyrotechnics may also find something to admire. This is a polished, sea-breezed mystery that knows glamour is just another kind of disguise.
Pages: 272 | ASIN : B0G87FDWB6
