Review: Always Murder by Gregory Ashe

Title: Always Murder

Series: The Last Picks: Book Nine

Author: Gregory Ashe

Length: 241 Pages

Category: Cozy Mystery

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: This series is sweet and cozy, goofy and corny and charming, and it’s a welcome bit of easy to make you forget how hard everything is for a while.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: The only thing worse than murder is…no murder?

It’s Christmastime, and Dashiell Dawson Dane (just Dash) is looking forward to a quiet holiday season—no unexpected visitors, no relationship drama, and absolutely no murders.

But when his friend Millie asks for help, Dash says yes. Because that’s what friends do.

Millie’s brother, he learns, has been accused of stealing packages from his job as a delivery driver. Worse, he’s been fired. So, Millie’s request is simple: clear her brother’s name—and, in the process, save Christmas.

No small task, it turns out, as Dash faces a suspiciously hostile warehouse manager, stumbles onto a family of porch pirates, and somehow gets roped into the Nought Family Nativity Pageant. And when Millie’s brother disappears, Dash fears the worst. In Dash’s (growing) experience, that can only mean one thing…

Because it’s always murder.

Isn’t it?

Review: I’ve often wondered how much of themselves an author puts into their characters. Gregory Ashe gives at least one clue to that mystery in Always Murder. Dashiell Dawson Dane being an author himself (when he’s not procrastinating) offers a wealth of insights into the process, the inspiration, the imposter syndrome, the brainstorming. But it’s when Dash says, “Some authors had their characters end up in the hospital every book. Sadists, I imagined,” that I knew. It is the seminal line that left no question Ashe is having at least a little fun poking at himself while writing this series.

Getting to know its characters has been influenced a good bit by getting to know the kind of people they come from. Let’s just say the parents introduced thus far leave much to be desired and explains a lot. That’s what makes the Last Picks’ found family all the more lovely to embrace—they prioritize and take care of each other while never hesitating to throw a little shade or give an atomic wedgie every so often.

This book introduces Millie’s family, which goes a fair way to explaining why Millie is who she is. The added bonus is that now I love and understand her a little more than I did before. The mystery revolves around her brother Paul and seems as cut and dried as it gets . . . until it isn’t. Even when there doesn’t seem to be a murder, there’s always a murder, and Dash is always on the case.

This series is sweet and cozy, goofy and corny and charming, and it’s a welcome bit of easy to make you forget how hard everything is for a while.