Preamble
Take a look at my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
Review
I’m grateful to the author and publisher for an Advanced Reader Copy via NetGalley. A Novel Murder is due to be published in June 2025.
Written by a publishing industry insider (Eve Hall), this forms the first of a three-part deal, and so presumably a trilogy of detective work done by cosy mystery author (and reluctant loner), Jane Hepburn. This novel is great fun, happy to lampoon the industry gently and with love, approaching its main character’s anxieties, insecurities, and quirks with both affection and clarity.
A 40-something singleton, Jane’s best and closest friend was her mother, who’s long since dead. She’s struggling to get her agent or editor to reply to her emails, and despite a generally well-received series of novels fears that her time as a working author might soon be over. But she’s going to give it one more shot, and she screws up her courage to attend a literary festival, Killer Lines. Here, Jane hopes she can network, promote her books, and hopefully track down both agent and editor. Tragedy ensues, both for the people at the festival and (perhaps) Jane’s career when early on the first full day of the conference she stumbles across the murdered body of said agent, stabbed to death with the festival’s grand prize, a dagger. (A nod to the CWA’s Dagger Awards.)
Hall/Nevin does a wonderful job of conveying early on something of the horror of the industry—the burdens and anxieties and financial securities of it all—as well as the horror of attending a festival solo, as a neurodivergent person, or just a shy middle-aged woman. I cringed. I felt seen. It reminded me I really should try to attend conferences/festivals more….
As the discoverer of the body, Jane is immediately in the frame, and there’s a real risk that with her agent now dead she’ll definitely be jettisoned from the ailing agency firm, if it remains at all. She abandons ship and is on the train back home until a chance encounter with the agency’s intern, who turns out to be a big fan of her detective and encourages her to think that maybe, just maybe, she might have a better shot at solving the murder than the police. After all, she’s written so many brilliant detective stories already? And who doesn’t like to imagine they could give this sort of work a go?
The pair return and are joined by a young and much-lauded debut author to conduct their investigation, making a pleasingly sympathetic trio of investigators. Although broad, the cast of characters/suspects is ultimately well balanced. The BookToker, for example, is drawn straight from real life and discussions about alternative publishing careers. Hall/Nevin provides real differentiation between characters occupying familiar roles: the brash American counterpart, the young unpaid intern, the millennial who’s sure she knows everything and does everything and could do her boss’s job 10 times better if she only got the chance. However, editor Frankie’s presence felt uneven. She appears before she’s strictly relevant as a voice, which generates suspicion that (may or) may not have been warranted.
Hall/Nevin introduces a number of characters with tangled personal relationships prior to their work involvement with each other, going back to childhood. This serves as a useful confounding factor. Is the motive from the here-and-now of the industry, or something much deeper and more personal? It also conveniently allows the amateur detectives and the official police to hare off down different tracks. As always with unofficial detective stories, the police seem entirely indifferent to some key elements of the case, in particular the types of emotional motives that the literary industry might produce. Who would kill over a book, the official police wonder to themselves? Lots of people, think all of the festival attendees.
There are some wonderful moments of humour throughout. I love that bum trouble makes an appearance as a ruse, like in children’s detective stories featuring Montgomery Bonbon (which I’m currently reading to my daughter). I also love the multiple references to Jonathan Creek. It speaks to me as someone approaching 40 for whom Jonathan Creek was a formative telly watch (and probably a core memory for my Extraordinary Sidekicks work).
Impressively, it is more successful, I think, than the similar Anthony Horowitz novel, A Line to Kill (2021), where Anthony and his private detective colleague, Daniel Hawthorne, are promoting their books at a book festival and everything goes horribly awry, leaving them with a murder to solve. There is something fresh and funny here, and I am really looking forward to reading whatever comes next for Jane and her newfound friends!
See also
These lists capture other stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- A Line to Kill (Anthony Horowitz)
- Death and Croissants (Ian Moore)
- Jonathan Creek (TV series)
Take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
Dominique Gracia 
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