‘Grave Mistake’ by Ron Ellis

Published by Headline,
October 2001.
ISBN: 978-0-7472-7224-7

On a Saturday afternoon in mid-March, Johnny Ace and his business partner, ex-police Inspector Jim Burroughs of the recently formed Ace Investigations, are called by millionaire Leonard Smithson to rescue his daughter Jo, who has been abducted from a supermarket car park in central Liverpool. While Johnny starts investigating who and why, Jim, attempts to calm an agitated Leonard who vows to do anything to get his daughter back. But before the search party gets seriously underway, Joanna telephones to say she has escaped her captures. That she killed one in the process lands her on a murder charge, and that’s just the start if the tale,

Meanwhile Ace Investigations is asked by one Norris Pond to trace a David Blease, who once played for a football team now extinct, called The Wavertree Corinthians. Mr Pond states that he is compiling a history of the group. It doesn’t seem very exciting. But routine investigation reveals that David Blease disappeared in 1979 and has never been heard of since. So begins a bizarre chain of events.

Interspersed with the on-going investigations of murder and mayhem, we learn that Victorias first tooth has come through. Yes, Maria has produced a daughter and Johnny lives almost permanently with Maria, well almost, there is still the pull towards Hilary who Johnny has been seeing on and off for twenty years. However, Johnny has resolved that although he wants to remain friends with Hilary, now he has a daughter, he will be faithful to Maria. Well, that’s what he says!

To complicate Johnny’s life further, his house is attacked by what appears to be a racist group, and his Asian tenant ends up I hospital.

This is the fifth in the Johnny Ace series and I opened the book confident that I was in for a good mystery with characters I have come to like, although I cannot see myself gong on a Sunday evening to watch Jim’s new group. The Chocolate Lavatory.

A wonderful read with a great sense of place.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Hayes

Ron Ellis. Writer, Broadcaster and Photographer, Ron is the author of the popular series of crime novels set on Merseyside featuring Liverpool radio D.J./Private Eye, Johnny Ace. He also writes the D.C.I. Glass mystery series. As well as his fiction titles, Ron has written 'Southport Faces' a social history of the town seen through the eyes of 48 of its best-known residents. His 'Journal of a Coffin Dodger', the hilarious adventures of an 84 year old playboy, has been serialised on BBC Radio and poems from his collection of poetry, 'Last of the Lake Poets', have won several nationwide competitions.
During the 1980's, he conducted over 192 interviews with friends and relatives of John Lennon for Albert Goldman's biography, 'The Lives of John Lennon'. Ron writes the football reports for the Southport Champion and is also their theatre and arts reviewer as well as being a regular contributor to magazines such as Lancashire Life. He runs his own publishing company, Nirvana Books.