Murder for Good is, unbelievably, the TWENTIETH, instalment in the Ellie Quick Mystery series. I can’t believe I hadn’t discovered this series before now. Usually I don’t request books of long standing series because I like reading series from the beginning, but I didn’t realize this was part of a series until after I started reading it and by then it was too late – I was hooked.
Title: Murder for Good
Author: Veronica Heley
Series: An Ellie Quicke Mystery #20
First Published: December 3, 2019
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Categories: Mystery
Acquired: from the publisher via NetGalley
*** Thank you to the publisher, Severn House Publishers, for providing me with a e-copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. ***
Ellie Quicke’s husband Thomas, a retired minister, is suspicious when he receives not one but five letters advising him that he has been left money by five different people in their wills. He only barely knew two of his benefactors and the rest are strangers. Why would they have left him money?
In order to help clear her husband’s conscience and his reputation, Ellie starts to investigate, but is constantly distracted by Hetty, a homeless woman who refuses to leave their home after Thomas graciously let her “temporarily” stay. Plus, Ellie’s daughter, Diana, is having financial troubles again, and pressuring Ellie to bail her out.
Murder for Good is too good to put down
It has been awhile since I couldn’t put a book down, but this was one of them. I started reading this in the evening, thinking I’d get in a few chapters before going to bed. I ended up staying up until way, way, WAY past my bedtime in order to finish it. The plot was so engaging and the characters were so well written that I couldn’t go to sleep without knowing all the answers.
Ellie is a fascinating protagonist. She’s old-fashioned in many ways (her previous husband and her daughter both treat her as someone who was only good for being a housewife) but she’s strong and smart and totally capable.
Both Ellie and her second husband, Thomas, have generous hearts and gracious spirits. That is part of their problem – they are almost generous to a fault. It often leads to bad situations – such as not being able to get rid of their lodger, Hetty – but for the most part, it also means that they are able to do a lot of good in their community.
There isn’t a main murder in the normal sense that a mystery usually has a central death. Instead, there are a bunch of deaths thatare “off-screen” (so to speak). They come into the story because the people who die leave Thomas various sums of money, ranging from 100 to 20,000 pounds. It’s these bequests that form the heart of the mystery – why are people (who Thomas barely knows, if he knows them at all) leaving him money in their wills? Thomas starts getting worried that the police will think he has something to do with their deaths.
I was able to dive right into this Ellie Quick Mystery
I also found myself reacting VERY strongly to the characters. Many of them were great characters, including Ellie, Thomas and their ex-housekeeper, Susan and her new fiance, Rafael. They were so sweet and caring of each other. And then there was Hetty and Ellie’s daughter, Diana. Oh my, how I hated these two. I mean, LOATHED. At one point I actually said out loud “I HATE THIS WOMAN!”. Heley’s writing made these two so terrible – but with such realism that I could totally believe that someone like this could exist in real life.
As I mentioned earlier, I hadn’t realised that this was part of a long-running series when I started reading it (the Goodreads book page doesn’t make it clear that this book is part of the series). In fact, I only found out about the series by accident when I started reading more about the author online. By then I was almost halfway through the book.
I think it’s a great compliment to the writer that I didn’t realise I had dived into a series. Often, I can tell that the book is part of a series because I feel a bit lost when I start reading – as if there are inside jokes that I’m just not getting or the story alludes to something in the character’s background that’s never explained. But I never felt this way at all. I can’t wait to discover some of the previous books as I’m sure there’s some really great background to Ellie and Thomas’ stories.
Read Murder for Good for yourself
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This was an amazing review!