‘Deadly Fortune’ by Jared Cade

Published by Scarab Books,
9 August 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-0686729-9-6 (PB)

Deadly Fortune, one of the books comprising Jared Cade’s award-winning Lyle Revel and Hermione Bradbury mystery series, is entertainingly littered with corpses. The events of the story are triggered at its outset, when Andrew Rogers, a self-made billionaire—owner and mastermind of a huge hotel empire—dies unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack. He is only sixty-three and, up to that point, had seemed to enjoy good health.

Cade’s work generally falls into the “cozy crime” category, with the author sparing us guts and gore. He informs us these deaths occurred and provides a cursory explanation of how and when but refuses to inflict on us with the grisly details. He also shirks from explicit sex scenes. His female characters, however dubious their motivations, are usually beautiful, refined and wealthy. When they aren’t committing murder, he features males who are similarly well educated, well behaved and well off.

Cade’s detectives contribute to the charm offensive characteristic of his work. Lyle is extremely handsome and well-spoken, and Hermione is lovely and loveable despite her sharp wit and keen intelligence. Together, they make an effective team. Hermione helps Lyle in his career as an actor while the two of them make a habit of solving murders that baffle the police, whether in England or the States, where Lyle finds work as a devilishly good-looking rogue on a popular soap opera. They are admirably brave and resourceful, ignoring personal danger as they plough ahead with their investigations, intent on finding the killer and bringing him—or her—to justice.   

The plot of Deadly Fortune is improbable, and so are its characters, but it is emphatically enjoyable, a real page-turner. Crime fiction is a broad church, encompassing many types of stories and many types of storytelling. Jared Cade is a master of fluid, fluent prose, crafting the undemanding read that surprises and delights. Deadly Fortune’s ending is amusing yet also satisfying; it’s a canny reader who could guess the culprit.
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Reviewer: Wendy Jones Nakanishi/aka Lea O’Harra.

Jared Cade is a former tour guide for a bespoke luxury travel company, escorting parties around Agatha Christie’s former home Greenway, in Devon, which is open to the public courtesy of the National Trust. During an appearance on the British television quiz the 64,000 Dollar Question, he won the top prize on his specialist subject of Agatha Christie’s novels. Jared Cade’s writing is heavily influenced by the Golden Age of crime fiction. He has a fondness for amateur sleuths, traditional mysteries, locked-room murders, and impossible crimes. He is the creator of the crime-solving duo of actor Lyle Revel and cellist Hermione Bradbury who take centre stage in a series of British cosy murder mysteries. He shares his tips for writing on the Crime Writers’ Association website.  

Lea O’Harra.  An American by birth, did her postgraduate work in Britain – an MA in Lancaster and a doctorate at Edinburgh – and worked full-time for 36 years at a Japanese university. Since retiring in March 2020, she has spent part of each year in Lancaster and part in Takamatsu on Shikoku Island, her second home, with occasional visits to the States to see family and friends. An avid reader of crime fiction since childhood, as a university professor she wrote academic articles on it as a literary genre and then decided to try her hand at composing such stories herself, publishing the so-called ‘Inspector Inoue mystery series’ comprising three murder mysteries set in rural, contemporary Japan. She has also published two standalone crime fiction novels.