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Holly Love looks forward to her upcoming marriage to Andrew McNish, but when she arrives home on the day of her wedding, she finds a note on the refrigerator. Something has come up, and Andrew can’t marry her after all—but that didn’t prevent him from stealing $1200 from her before disappearing.
Holly hires Mick O’Brien to hunt down her no-account ex-fiancé and get her money back. Unfortunately, she finds O’Brien dead on his living room floor from an apparent heart attack. Now what’s she to do? Take on his cases, of course.
While Holly hunts for Andrew, O’Brien’s clients keep calling for results, and since she’s broke and they’re paying, she turns into a private investigator. Then her search for Andrew leads her to a strange old lady named Una Maggot, who insists that Andrew has been murdered.
It takes a few chapters for Love, Honour, and O’Brien to get started, but it eventually turns into a peculiar but interesting mystery, filled with eccentric characters and a heroine who doesn’t crawl under the covers and pull them over her head once she’s been jilted. Holly is sad but not heart-broken, and she’s determined to find Andrew—and at least get her money back, if possible.
Set in a mysterious small town in Australia, Love, Honour, and O’Brien oozes with intrigue and charm. Individual characters leap off the page and add a bit of smoggy atmosphere to the plot—and you’ll never quite know what they’ll do next.
Unfortunately, though, when I arrived at the end, I was disappointed to find that nothing was solved regarding Andrew’s disappearance. It felt like a few chapters where left out of the completed book. Perhaps this is meant to be an ongoing series, with Holly continuing her search for Andrew—but if so, it still ends rather abruptly, leaving the conclusion unfinished and unsatisfying. Still, it did leave me thinking, Okay, what the heck happens next?
Other than the less than savory ending, though, Love, Honour, and O’Brien is a pretty good mystery that’s worth picking up—along with any future mysteries involving Holly Love. It has just the right mix of mystery, comedy, and charm to keep you hooked.
