Death At Disney
by Julio J. Vazquez

Copyright © 2002
179 pages
$31.95 Hardbound edition
$15.75 Paperback
$ 7.63 E-Book
Created through Lulu.com
ISBN: 978-1-4357-2132-6 (Hardbound)
ISBN: 978-1-4116-0345-5 (Paperback)

From the very first word, Death at Disney evoked a strong sense of the 1950's cop show, Dragnet. Not because the story is a period piece, but while I read the opening I could hear the narrator for Dragnet in my mind, becoming the voice of the main character, private investigator, Albert Cummings. The story opens with Cummings visiting the world of Disney, "the happiest place on earth", as it is billed. And we enter into the thoughts of Cummings as he spends his time alone observing he is not the only unhappy person there. This was to be the dream vacation of a lifetime; it's just too bad he is unable to share it with his wife, who is now an ex, and his daughter. Through the introduction, we see Albert Cummings as a jaded, tired, professional, who didn't see how his job destroyed his family until it was too late. He is fast becoming irritated with the ubiquitous Disney cheer, and has found nothing to distract him from his own depressing thoughts.

Death at Disney is written primarily in first person present tense, which works well for this story because Albert has come to a cross-roads in his life. What he has lost is left behind, and he doesn't have a good sense of what's ahead so he is living in the here and now. That all changes when he meets Sarah Williams, a teenage pickpocket, trying to scrape together enough money to sustain herself by fleecing tourists at Disney World.

I now take a look around me and notice the direction in which the majority of the throng around me is heading. With a small gleam in my eye, I notice most of them carrying various guides to the park and following the directions like sheep. I turn to the left at the first intersection I can, avoiding the sea now turning right. As I make the turn, I feel a bump at my side. A hand snakes into my jacket with a fleeting touch. It feels almost like a butterfly kissing a rose petal, but I’m trained to be very conscious of my surroundings and my body. I grab the arm before the person can leave my side.

Up until Sarah was introduced into the story, the writing style was a stream of consciousness monologue for the most part. It establishes the character of Albert Cummings and provides some of his back story for the reader. When Albert catches Sarah attempting to pick his pocket, he decides not to turn her in to the park police, but instead works a deal with her. If she turns in all of the wallets she has lifted, which she has stashed in her purse, he'll let her go. Albert even goes a step further and tells her to call him Uncle Frank and he'll vouch for her by showing his private investigators license, and will say his "niece" just found this purse full of wallets. And of course, part of the deal is that she not steal any more so he isn't put into the position of having to turn her in later in the day. The upshot is they both enjoy each others company so well, they spend the rest of the day at the park together experiencing it like a father and daughter, enjoying it to the hilt. Until, during a stunt show, one of the audience members collapses dead to the ground. Albert is roped in to help find the killer, with Disney footing the tab. Will Albert find the killer before the killer turns the tables on him and Sarah?

While I normally don't mix critiques and reviews, there are just a few minor issues which keep this very good book from being an excellent book, and I value the strength of Julio Vazquez's writing enough to point them out. First off, the cover does not do the book justice. While I do like the mouse ears on the headstone, the pink background simply doesn't work for the semi-hard boiled private eye mystery story within. Even something like the legs of a crowd walking behind the (smaller) headstone would work, with a bolder, larger title. There also needs to be some attention given to the line editing of the manuscript. It may be the copy I was reading; however, occasionally there is the number one at the beginning of a line, such as 1Anywhere or 1"Yes." In addition to those strange instances, on a few occasions Albert Cummings, who has assumed a pseudonym of Frank Cousins when dealing with the suspects for the murder, calls himself Cummings to the suspects, or one of the characters who only know him as Cousins, calls him Cummings.

One final observation, which is purely my personal opinion, Vazquez intermittently brings sexual overtones into the thoughts of Albert Cummings about Sarah, and it felt forced, did not advance the story line, and would be better to have been left out. It made me uncomfortable with Albert's character at times because it just didn't fit the character I knew throughout the rest of the book. And while I understand his loneliness, and needing to feel loved, I would have been much more comfortable with his having those types of thoughts about another adult, rather than a teenager. It sullied the close father/daughter development that was building between Albert and Sarah with pedophile overtones, and I don't believe that was the intent of the author. That being said, those passages are brief and very few. The book would just be better without them.

I thoroughly enjoyed my read of Death at Disney. Mr. Vazquez has the gift of turning a phrase. One of my favorites was in the quote above of almost like a butterfly kissing a rose petal. What a beautiful image, especially in juxtaposition to the sad overtones of the previous passages. The development of the relationship which springs up between two lonely people, who meet by chance, is done very naturally. I like a character with spunk and it is Sarah's spirit which helps to bring Albert out of his funk. And helps him to see the world from a fresh perspective, through the eyes of someone, who with her experiences, could be jaded, but isn't. Through the pages of Death at Disney, Julio Vazquez establishes himself as a talented author with a strong voice, who crafts a suspenseful tale. Death at Disney is an excellent choice for anyone who enjoys a good old fashioned murder mystery.

As a side note, Death at Disney marks the first book that I have read for review on my Kindle 2. I converted the PDF to the Kindle format, loaded it to the Kindle and was able to enjoy the experience completely. I even played around with some of the Kindle features, such as playing some of the book as an audio book using the Text to Speech feature. While the voice is not quite as robotic as I would have expected, if I listened to it reading fiction to me for any extended period of time, I would go absolutely crazy. There are, for obvious reasons, no inflections to the words or sense of dramatic timing, but I think for a textbook, or some other business related writing, it would not be as bad. I was also able to highlight text and make notations so that they were easy to find once I was done reading the book. The Kindle also kept my place for me, when I had to turn the unit off during the course of reading this book. I remember the eagerness I felt when turning the Kindle back on to get right back into the story, exactly where I left off.

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Originally reviewed for the LL Book Review

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LK Gardner-Griffie
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