Everybody Loved Roger Harden – A Brief Book Review

A mansion. A stormy night. A cast of quirky characters. No telephone service.  A murder. Another murder. Nowhere to go.

I don’t know if Cecil Murphey did it on purpose or not, but this book made me want to watch the movie Clue.

A  group of people relatively unfamiliar to one another are summoned to the dinner party of a wealthy man who is privy to  information that could lead to the ruin of each and every one of them. I’m not gonna lie, as I read, I envisioned the dining room of the Clue mansion.

The 317-page book was intriguing enough for me to finish is just a couple sittings, and I enjoyed the easy-to-read lighthearted  (if a murder-mystery can be called that) story.

Though I had correctly guessed the mogul’s reason for the dinner party by the time I hit the 20 percent mark in the ebook, I didn’t figure out the killer until much later.

There was a slight bit of cheesiness to the female protagonist’s character, but I still liked her. And the male protagonist was likable as well.

A Christian novel, the book has a lovely story of redemption. It’s definitely not an edge-of-your-seat thriller, nor is it incredibly deep, but it is an enjoyable read. And maybe that was the point.

I have great respect for Cecil Murphey. I have read a number of his 100+ non-fiction books, and have learned a TON about writing from him. You may know him as the co-author of 90-Minutes in Heaven with Don Piper.

I prefer his nonfiction to his fiction, but I did like this one enough that I plan to read the other two in the series also. You can find the complete print book series on amazon – Everybody’s Suspect in Georgia Mystery Series, or buy book #1 on kindle – Everybody Loved James Harden.

(I did not receive any compensation for reading and reviewing this book. Thinking about what I liked and didn’t like about a book I’ve just finished reading is a good workout for my brain.)