Mystery Review: The Last Word | Elly Griffiths

If you haven’t read any of the novels in Elly Griffiths’ Harbinder Kaur collection, you’ve been missing out. These standalone mysteries have two things in common: detective Harbinder Kaur and a mystery that only a bibliophile can truly appreciate. Each of her books have surrounded some sort of literary element to the mystery. In the case of The Last Word, that element is the murder of a local writer and ties to another dead writer.

What is The Last Word about?

Edwin Fizgerald and his business partner (and caregiver) Natalka Kolisnyk have their own detective agency. Along with the help of their colleague DI Harbinder Kaur, the team has been able to solve several murders. Natalka’s partner Benedict Cole owns the Coffee Shack in the seaside town of Shoreham and the two live together along with her mother Valentyna. Three is a crowd, as they say, and Natalka is looking to Edwin to help find a new case and get her some time away from the flat.

It’s not long before two sisters approach Edwin and Natalka for help. Their mother Melody Chambers was a local romance writer and she’s been found dead. The sisters insist it was murder and they point the finger at their mother’s second husband. They’ve barely taken the case when Benedict’s friend stops by with news that his longtime friend Father Don was writing romance novels under the pseudonym Donna Parsons. It appears that Father Don may have been murdered as well. Is someone set on murdering writers?

Natalka and Edwin have their suspicions, and when Harbinger runs their list of names through the police database, they discover another writer recently died. All three deaths were attributed to natural causes, but the pattern must be more than a coincidence. When Edwin discovers that all three dead writers attended a writer’s workshop together, he becomes more convinced that the deaths are connected. Benedict and Edwin sign up to attend the writer’s retreat, but it’s not long before another writer dies at the very property where the retreat is hosted. Someone is targeting writers, and they seem to be using the retreat to do it…

What did I think?

This wasn’t the first time I was introduced to Edwin, Natalka, and Benedict—the three also appeared in The Postscript Murders two books prior to this. I was excited to revisit them and especially the seafront town where they live. It’s a lovely setting for a good mystery! Don’t worry if you haven’t read that prior book, it’s a separate story and only relates through the shared characters.

Edwin was so glad to be leaving the cheating spouse cases behind when Natalka comes in with a murder case. The alleged murder of Melody Chambers was only intriguing at best though. The writer had a heart attack in her kitchen—at least that was what the police thought. Her daughters are convinced their step father murdered her and it sounded flimsy to me. But then Edwin’s handy habit of reading the obituary pages comes in handy, because he thinks he has found a link between Melody Chambers and another writer who died before her.

I was as curious as Natalka and Edwin about why exactly someone would be murdering writers, but it did sound like too many deaths to be a coincidence. Especially since they were all linked through the writers’ retreat. Of course that leads to Edwin and Benedict going undercover, which kept me locked in to this mystery.

This was the lightest of the books I’ve read by Elly Griffiths. She seemed to have fun writing this, and it was more cozy than it was gothic the way the other books were. I will never prefer anything over her gothic style (especially in The Stranger Diaries), but I thought this was fun to see something different in tone. It still had the same sharp writing and expert-plotting I’m used to from Griffiths.

The characters were well-developed and engaging, and I thought the mystery was full of intricately wound threads. Griffiths’ tends to have some social commentary in her books, and this was no exception. She does this in a subtle but still impactful way. Her characters are enjoyable and they are going through relatable challenges that many readers can connect with. The setting at the writing retreat was expertly-developed. Those scenes had a vibrance to them that made me wonder if it were inspired by Griffiths own experiences at a writers’ retreat.

Another wonderful mystery from Griffiths!

Thank you to Mariner Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.

If you liked The Last Word, what should you read next?

About the Author

Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway novels take for their inspiration Elly’s husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist, and her aunt who lives on the Norfolk coast and who filled her niece’s head with the myths and legends of that area. Elly has two children and lives near Brighton. Though not her first novel, The Crossing Places is her first crime novel.

About the Book

Natalka and Edwin, whom we met in The Postscript Murders, are running a detective agency in Shoreham, Sussex. Despite a steady stream of minor cases, Natalka is frustrated, longing for a big juicy case such as murder to come the agency’s way. Natalka is now living with dreamer, Benedict. But her Ukrainian mother Valentyna has joined them from her war-torn country and three’s a crowd. It’s annoying to have Valentyna in the tiny flat, cooking borscht and cleaning things that are already clean. To add to Natalka’s irritation, Benedict and her mother get on brilliantly.

Then a murder case turns up. Local writer, Melody Chambers, is found dead and her family are convinced it is murder. Edwin, a big fan of the obit pages, thinks there’s a link to the writer of Melody’s obituary who pre-deceased his subject.

The trail leads Benedict and Edwin to a slightly sinister writers’ retreat. When another writer is found dead, Edwin thinks that the clue lies in the words.

Seeking professional help, the amateur investigators turn to their friend, detective Harbinder Kaur, to find that they have stumbled on a plot that is stranger than fiction.