A Murder Is Going Down

I read and thoroughly enjoyed Kate Emery's CBCA Notable from last year, My Family and Other Suspects, and I'm delighted to report that A Murder Is Going Down is more in the same vein. It's not a sequel, but an entirely new story, which opens with our narrator, Heidi, and an older woman called Marianne, stuck in a lift together; Heidi begins to tell Marianne the story of a murder that was committed when her sister-in-law was also stuck in a lift -- the murder of Heidi's older brother Felix. 

From here, the story cuts between the pair in the lift, and the story that Heidi's telling. It sounds grim but fortunately Felix was a very unpleasant person, violent, manipulative and cruel, so we can regard his death with a degree of relief and concentrate on solving the mystery (which matters because if Felix killed himself, as the police might conclude, his lovely wife Elena loses out on the insurance payout). Heidi joins forces with Elena's younger brother, the annoying but charming Patrick, to unravel the clues.

A Murder is Going Down is heaps of fun. Heidi's narration and banter zing, the characters are appealing and well drawn, and the mystery (and the mystery within the mystery!) unfolds in a satisfyingly twisty fashion. The copy I borrowed from the library had already obviously been well read, unlike some of the notables I pluck from the shelves, sad to say, and it's refreshing to read a story set in Perth. I am already a big fan of Kate Emery and I hope she keeps producing these enormously entertaining novels.