Getting Lost

This ambitious debut blends European travelogue, erotic romance, and suspenseful drama, but none of those elements entirely satisfies. Stella is an outstanding tour manager leading travelers on a four-week exploration of Europe. She's thrown off her game when she discovers that notorious Phoebe Lancaster, who was charged with but never tried for the murder of her partner five years earlier, is on the tour. Stella is less worried that Phoebe might be a murderer than she is distracted by her intense attraction to the unsettling beauty. As the tour unfolds, Stella must juggle piecing together Phoebe's story with acting on their profound chemistry, all while keeping nearly 50 other tourists content. Readers get just a handful of impressions of the constantly changing settings, and the complicated threads of what happened five years ago develop into a story that, while thrilling at times, is similarly compressed. Readers are told more about Stella and Phoebe's connection than they're able to perceive for themselves. Awkward scenes include a visit to a WWII-era concentration camp that "provided the behavioural readjustment many [tourists] needed." The ideas are promising, but the execution fails to deliver. (Mar.)