It took a while but it only dawned on me when I was well into this book that the fictional Mount Hope is in my own current backyard which, although never clearly delineated, is the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong, Victoria, Australia, an area now well-known for its vineyards.
 
At the time this book is set, however, the summer of 1893/94, growing grapes was an irregular and risky venture for a farmer. Phoeba’s father Robert has the faith and he believes that sheep and wool are no longer the backbone of the country. This is borne out as the novel progresses; a progress that is at times slow as the bay waves that lap the shore, although this is not a book to gallop through and it needs to be savoured.
 
It is the social climbing that is the main focus of the book, all told with black and quirky humour. The star for me is Spot, the horse who is literally drawn to water, and some of the lesser characters are equally appealing, including the wacky maiden Aunt Margaret and the ill-used mail boy called Freckle. The historical research and references are excellent and give a strong sense of time and place.
 
Phoeba Crupp does remind one a little of Sybylla Melvyn, the heroine in Miles Franklin’s “My Brilliant Career”, who was another independently minded young woman trying to deal with the monotony and drudgery of life on the land in the burgeoning suffragette era of the 1890s.
 
The expectation is that Phoeba will marry Hadley Pearson, literally the boy next door, but she is chafing at the bit to experience more of life and her ambition is to be a vigneron on her own account. Her best friend is Hadley’s sister, Henrietta, but she isn’t fond of her own sister Lilith who is vain and flighty with her eye on the local rich widower, Marius Overton, and her mother Maude is overblown in all senses of the word, including furniture and hats. Her father Robert is long-suffering. Just one classic example:-
 
Robert settled his new hat onto his head. It was a pith hat and looked very silly.
‘Farmers don’t wear pith hats, Robert,’ said Maude.
‘I am not a farmer,’ said Robert. ‘I am a vigneron.’
Maude put her hand to her temple. ‘You are the cause of my headaches, Robert.’ She drifted inside taking the social pages with her.
 
When Phoeba encounters the attractive new Overton manager Rudolph Steel, she has a lot of thinking to do about what she really wants out of life vs. her obligations. The ending almost seems predictable at one point until there’s a surprising switch-about.
 
Four stars.

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​This is a "cosy" mystery story about what happens when good intentions come up against an individual who is either just psychologically disturbed or is very artful with their own evil agenda hidden behind a mask. 

Ellie Quicke is married to Thomas, a retired minister. Both of them become alarmed and suspicious when Thomas starts receiving a series of bequests from deceased people he barely knew. Ellie investigates to see if there is some link that ties them together. 

Meanwhile, Ellie has another problem with a homeless woman, Hetty, whom she has taken in only to realise she forebodes serious trouble (not least her terrible cooking, hence the reference to a pie on the book's cover). And then there's the truly awful Diana, Ellie's daughter, who starts making onerous demands for money. Ellie has some difficult, even dangerous, issues ahead of her.

When an author is new to me, I prefer not to know anything about them until after I have read their book. Since reading this title, I've discovered Veronica Heley is multi-published and Murder for Good is the 20th in a series featuring an older woman sleuth. This is a bit of a disadvantage as is the case with many such series you need to be up with the back story to really get a grip on the characters and their motivations.

That said, I still managed to enjoy this for its slightly quirky plot line and its human qualities, although there are unpleasant aspects too. I couldn't abide Ellie's daughter, Diana, and the way she terrorised her mother, so that ended up spoiling the book for me. Ellie struck me as a bit of a ditherer but being unfamiliar with all that she has been through previously, or why she tolerates receiving such treatment from her daughter, I never quite "got" her. I also thought the ending rather abrupt with no real comeuppance for the culprit.

An entertaining read with a lot of positives, but if that awful Diana features in all the other books in the Ellen Quicke  series it has put me off reading any others.

(With many thanks to NetGalley and Severn Books for the ARC)

Three stars

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Slow journeys are in vogue these days with many of us seeking counteraction to lives that are all about rushing around and getting things done quickly, so this book about a long funeral procession is part of that trend.
 
The book’s back cover blurb by the publisher summarises it best:-
 
Bankrupt dairy farmer Tom Murray decides he'd rather sell off his herd and burn down his own house than hand them over to the bank. But something goes tragically wrong, and Tom dies in the blaze. His wife, Dawn, doesn't want him to have died for nothing and decides to hold a funeral procession for Tom as a protest, driving 350 kilometres from Yardley in country Victoria to bury him in Melbourne where he was born. To make a bigger impact she agrees with some neighbours to put his coffin on a horse and cart and take it slow - real slow.
But on the night of their departure, someone burns down the local bank. And as the motley funeral procession passes through Victoria, there are more mysterious arson attacks. Dawn has five days to get to Melbourne. Five days, five more towns, and a state ready to explode in flames ... [copyright HarperCollins Australia]
 
The whole process is seen through the eyes of Tom’s teenaged son, Jack, and his voice is quintessentially modern Aussie. The issues with low prices being paid by supermarkets to dairy farmers and regional areas struggling with debt and drought are topical. People are drawn to the cause and along the way there are confrontations with local authorities and the police while the national media and assorted individuals all join in for the ride.
 
With its combination of laconic humour, grit and perseverance in the face of adversity, this book will charm many readers.  The narrative is fast paced and some familiarity with contemporary Australia plus knowledge of the characteristics of the real towns along the route will help to add extra layers for readers. (I live near to the ferry terminal in question and could well visualise the amusing process involved in trying to get a horse and cart, plus coffin, onto that ferry.)
 
There a few aspects that didn’t gel for me, however. Why Jack and his twin, Jenny, had to have a rare, bizarre medical condition that didn’t really have all that much of a bearing on the events puzzled me. And being very much against the ruthless murderer bushranger, Ned Kelly, I never like it when his words are used in any sort of inspirational sense.
 
Other than that, this is a most entertaining read that will most likely find its way into a cinematic version before long.
 
Three stars.

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