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Saturday 17 April 2010

Murder by Mistake


I am a fan of Veronica Heley's Ellie Quicke series and the latest one - Murder by Mistake - lives up to the high standard set by the previous books. Ellie is married to Thomas and living in Aunt Drusilla's house now that her aunt is dead. She is playing host to Ursula's wedding reception and looking after Mia as she recovers from her ordeal at the hands of her family and their friends. Ursula and Mia appeared in the previous book in the series Murder in House.

Everything is going smoothly with the wedding plans until Ellie's obnoxious daughter Diana appears and announces she wants to hold her own wedding reception at the house on the same day and Ursula's will have to be cancelled. But Ellie puts her foot down about it and refuses to cancel Ursula. So then it's two wedding receptions on the sane day - which would have been fine if someone hadn't decided to try and wipe out Mia and/or Ellie by various means.

This is a fast paced plot with an excellent mixture of fascinating characters. The constant battles between Ellie and her daughter are always interesting; and Ellie's endless curiosity about friends and neighbours and her efforts to help unravel their lives make for entertaining reading. The sub text is always Ellie trying to live up to her Christian principles - with her successes and failures. This could be sickly but isn't because Ellie is a strong character with a sense of humour and a well developed sense of the ridiculous as well as a good knowledge of human nature.

This is a series I collect in hardback and regularly re-read. It deserves to be better known in my opinion.

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