Epilogue to a Christmas Murder - the eleventh (and final) Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery

It took a lot of strength for me to finally pick up this book and read it.  Ever since I picked up the first two books in this series and began reading about Addie Greybourne back in 2019 (just six years ago???), I have been absolutely hooked.  The characters are so real, the stories so engaging, and the crimes so well-plotted - I felt like this had become a real little world of which I had the privilege to peek in and watch from time to time.  Over the past six years, I have been fortunately enough to communicate with the author, Lauren Elliott (a/k/a Linda Maureen Fowler), on any number of occasions, and I found her to be personable, considerate, and simply wonderful to chat with.  So, it was with shock and profound sadness when, back in August, I and other fans of Elliott and her books learned that this amazing woman had passed away on August 11, 2025.  I was so stunned, and it was shortly after her passing that this next book in her Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery series was published - the last one she wrote before she died.  I bought the book and put off reading it, because I knew that once I did, there would be no more - that the adventures of Addie Greybourne and her ever-growing supporting cast would come to an end.  But my love of Elliott's writing and her story-telling skills got the better of me, so I picked it up, determined to take my time and relish every page for as long as I could.  Well, it only took me two days to read the book, I got so caught up in the story and just HAD to know who did it and why!

 

Epilogue to a Christmas Murder, while not intended to be the final book, is certainly the perfect book end for this series.  Over the past several books, Addie Greybourne's life has gone through a number of changes - her best friend, Serena, has gotten married and had children.  Her first love when moving to Greybourne Harbor, police chief Marc Chandler, found a new love and has settled into marital bliss.  Her bookstore and curio shop has grown so that she had two employees helping her out - Paige and Nikki.  Her most recent love and ex-fiance, Simon Emerson, has reunited with his wife and son, starting a new chapter in their life. Her mentor and mother-figure, Catherine Lewis, has married a globe-trotting man of mystery, and she is rarely in Greybourne Harbor any more.  As for Addie herself?  Well, she has returned after taking a year's sabbatical in England, where she not only solved a murder, but found her heart falling for a certain detective inspector (Noah Parker), only to leave England before it ever even had a chance.  Now, Addie is back in Greybourne Harbor, everything and everyone has changed, and Addie doesn't know where she fits in any more - but one thing's for sure, wherever Addie is, a murder is never far behind!

 

The town is gearing up not only for the Christmas gala at the museum, located just above the rocky cliffs of the harbor, but also for Paige's Christmas day wedding to her boyfriend, Logan.  But nothing is ever easy when Addie is around  first, Paige's wedding plans are disrupted when her wedding planner quits after Paige's mother (who happens to be Addie's business neighbor, Martha!) takes over planning the wedding - since she is paying for it, she will make all the decisions!  As Paige's maid of honor, it's up to Addie to try and smooth things over before Paige and Logan decide to elope!  Meanwhile, the "Twelve Days of Christmas" fundraiser and gala faces an uncertain future when all of the donations - including a first edition copy of O. Henry's The Four Million, which contains his famous short story, "The Gift of the Magi" and was delivered all the way from England - are stolen right out from under Addie's and the entire board's noses!  And when a body turns up at the bottom of the cliff, just below the museum from where the presents were stolen - well, let's just say it does not look like anyone is going to have a very merry Christmas.

 

Oh, did I mention that the book Addie was donating, which was worth quite a hefty sum, signed by O. Henry, and came all the way from England, was hand delivered personally by none other than Detective Inspector Noah Parker!  No one is more surprised than Addie, who thought she was never going to see him again. However, it's a good thing he's in town, because it turns out that the dead body is Nikki's ex-husband, Chad, who she divorced and ran away from because he was so abusive.  All evidence points to Nikki as the killer, and since she is Marc's cousin, he has to take a leave of absence while Noah is asked to step in and head up the investigation.  So, it ends up with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys ... er, I mean, Addie alongside Marc and Noah ... working together to figure out who the real killer is so Nikki does not end up being railroaded by a politically-minded mayor who is running for re-election and wants this case wrapped up quickly.  As the evidence builds against Nikki, Addie is more convinced than ever that someone else is to blame, and she's determined to prove it, even if that means she has to do it on her own!

 

The book, which, I think, is probably the longest in the series, weighing in at 360 pages, splits its time between Addie trying to figure out who killed Nikki's ex-husband and Addie trying to figure out just who she is now and how she fits in with all of the changes in her friends' lives.  Anyone who has ever had some major upheavals in their life and had to make some major changes will appreciate the frustration, sadness, and constant questioning that Addie goes through over the course of the book.  And while, from the very beginning of this series, I have been a big supporter of Addie and Marc, I can admit that maybe, just maybe, our English inspector might actually be a better fit for Addie.  Thankfully, she figures this out by the end of the story, as well, after she manages to uncover the identity of the real killer, thereby proving Nikki's innocence (and proving, as she always does, that she was right all along!).

 

Elliott, who admits to being a fan of Nancy Drew, having read all her books growing up, manages to sneak a Nancy Drew reference into this book!  When Addie is at the police station, where a press conference is set up, she asks one of the reporters if she remembers her, and the reporter responds with, "My favorite bookseller and Greybourne Harbor's very own Nancy Drew" (p. 149).  Elliott also slips in a British female detective reference, when Noah refers to her as "Agatha Raisin" (p. 194), which is a British television series about an amateur female sleuth (and it happens to be based on a book series by M.C. Beaton).  I suppose Elliott wanted to give both American and British readers a bit of a nod with famous female detectives from both sides of the pond.

 

The only thing that left me a bit nonplussed with this mystery is the fact that we never find out who stole the presents (and Addie's valuable book) from the museum.  Addie kept wondering if the theft and the murder were connected, but after it turned out they were not, and the real murderer is revealed, the theft is pushed to the back burner.  There is an epilogue of sorts (perhaps where the title comes from?) where some of the stolen items show up on the doorsteps of various people in town, all wrapped up in shiny Christmas paper, with sleigh bells being heard by each person who finds the gift on their front porch.  It seems everything EXCEPT the O. Henry book is returned, and nothing further is said about it.  I realize with the Christmas theme of the book, the hint here is that perhaps "Santa" took the gifts and gave them out to those who they should go to (especially since the man who stole them was dressed up as an elf, and no one knew who he was);  however, I just feel like Addie would be more invested in finding that missing book and the thief who took it.  Maybe it was a plot thread that was going to come back in play in a future book, but now....oh, well, it's a mystery that shall forever remain unsolved.

 

And now it's over.  Addie's mystery-solving days in book form are over.  I would like to think that her sleuthing days continue, as she and Noah continue to work together to solve murders in Greybourne Harbor, as well as Pen Hollow, and maybe even Moorscrag, as well.  I have no doubt Elliott had many more ideas in mind for her book-minded sleuth, and I'll just have to imagine what they might have been (perhaps even one day solving the mystery of what book is the REAL first edition of Nancy Drew's Password to Larkspur Lane...).  Elliott will be greatly missed, as well Addie and all of her friends and family...until we meet again!

 

RATING:  10 pairs of red-and-white mittens out of 10 for providing Addie (and readers!) with one final mystery that gives us all a nice, well-wrapped conclusion to the tales of Addie Greybourne.

A Limited Edition Murder - the tenth Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery

It's been well over a year since I read the last book in the Beyond the Page Bookstore mystery series by Lauren Elliott.  So, it's been over a year since poor Addie Greyborne's life was quite literally turned upside down by revelations regarding her parentage and regarding her fiance's previous marriage.  Thus, I suppose it was apropos that I waited to read this book, since I discovered upon reading the first few pages that there is quite the time jump from Dedication to Murder to this book - a year, in fact!  Thus, my timing was actually quite impeccable, since I have now spent the same time away from Greyborne Harbor that Addie did.  Of course, just because she's spent a year in England does not mean that poor Addie can get away from finding a dead body...

A Limited Edition Murder finds our intrepid sleuth trying to come to terms with everything that happened in that last book.  Not only did she find out she was not who she always thought she was for her entire life, but she also discovered that her fiance was still married to his first wife - and has a son by her!  So, Addie escapes to England, where she takes up residence in a cottage owned by her friend and best-selling author, Anthony Radcliffe, who is more than happy to have her visiting, since he is about to formally announce his engagement to Hailey Granger, and Lord Bentley and his new wife will be coming for the engagement party!  It's set to be the biggest event that the small village in West Yorkshire has seen in some time, and while Addie is not overly thrilled at the idea of hobnobbing with near royalty, she is happy for her good friend, and so she wants to support him. Besides, it has been a year, and she will be returning to the States the next weekend after the party.  She has delayed returning home long enough.  Of course, that is when fate intervenes, and Addie stumbles upon a dead body in the moors on the morning after!

I will admit, the opening chapters for this book had me a bit concerned.  Honestly, the writing felt a bit different than Elliott's previous books, and it left me a bit off-kilter.  I can't quite put my finger on what it was while I was reading that felt "off," but I do know one thing that definitely struck me as odd in the writing.  On page 39, when Addie accidentally spills champagne on a mysterious woman in a red and white floral dress and says, as she's trying to wipe up the liquid, "I hope the champagne doesn't settle in the intricate gold filigree setting of that exquisite sapphire."  I found that to be a very unusual wording for someone to actually speak - it reads more like a description an author would use when describing the necklace to the reader.  I tried saying the line out loud, just to hear how it sounds, and it came out very awkward.  And if it were just this one instance, I might have written it off (no pun intended!) as merely a poor choice of wording.  But it happens again just 9 pages later, when Addie is trying to calm an argument between Tony and Lord Bentley, and on page 48, she suggests to Lord Bentley, "why don't you take a seat behind that beautiful carved walnut desk?"  Again, that sounds like an author's description and not dialogue.  People don't naturally go around describing things in that kind of way when they are talking to each other, unless the topic of the discussion is that particular item.  But, honestly, there was more to the odd feeling as I was reading it than these lines of dialogue.

However, I can say that once Addie takes Pippi for her morning walk and comes across the body in the foggy moor, the typical Elliott writing I'm used to reading returns, and boy does it return in full force!  From that moment on, even without Serena or Paige or Marc or any of the other regular supporting cast members I've grown to love in the past nine books, the mystery became so engrossing I could not put it down.  It's not often I finish a 300+ page book in less than 24 hours, but this one is one of them.  While there was one minor clue early on that gave away the identity of the culprit a little too soon, there was still plenty of mystery to solve - such as who killed the step-daughter of Addie's boss at the Second Chance Books and Bindery some twenty years earlier, and how does that connect to this murder?  Is it because both murder victims were wearing the very same necklace before they were killed, yet the necklace was not found on their body after?  Or does it have something to do with that first edition Wuthering Heights that Tony gave to his fiance at the engagement party, only to discover the book actually belonged to Lord Bentley, from whom it had been stolen years ago?  Elliott makes great use of this temporary supporting cast, with some of the characters definitely growing on you (I would love to see Jasper Henderson show up again!  and that DI Parker certainly gives Addie a run for her money!), and she does manage to bring in Serena and Paige, albeit briefly.  Of course, there is one bit of news from the States that Addie learns that did not make me happy at all (and I am hoping that in the next book, that will change, because I've still got my hopes on Addie and Marc getting together in the end!).

The final chapters in the book are somewhat bittersweet, as Addie prepares to return home, having to leave her new friends behind (with some tearful farewells), as well as an unexpected revelation regarding one of the new characters.  Whether this will impact Addie's life going forward, we shall have to wait and see.

Elliott throws in a couple of things in the story that brought a smile to my face.  First is the name of the road that leads to the main shopping district of West Yorkshire, which is aptly named "Crooked Lane" (p. 2).  I realize it is nothing more than a coincidence, but way back in the day - back in 1936 to be exact! - Mildred Wirt, the original ghostwriter of the Nancy Drew books, had a mystery published that was called The Clue at Crooked Lane (The Clue at Crooked Lane).  Which, of course, makes the Nancy Drew reference on page 215 even more ironic!  I'm still holding out hope that since this series is premised on first editions of various famous books, one of these days, Elliott is going to have a mystery that centers around a Nancy Drew book (and if she were to ever do so, I know exactly which Nancy Drew book would make the perfect plot point that someone would kill for!).  Ah, well, one can always dream...

Thus, even though the book got off a rocky start, the murder got everything back on track and left me enjoying the book immensely by the time I finished it!  Now to sit back and wait to see what Elliott has in store for book eleven!

RATING:  9 buckets of composting food out of 10 for another well-plotted murder mystery that once again shows just how well Addie Greyborne can hold herself, even against arrogant, self-absorbed detectives from the English countryside!