‘Etiquette for Lovers and Killers’ by Anna Fitzgerald Healy.

Published by Fleet,
7 August 2025. 
ISBN:  978-0-349-12734-7 (HB)

Billie McCadie is living in Eastport, a small town on the Maine coast enlivened mostly by the arrival of the wealthy holiday homeowners who look down on the residents and their little lives.  One day, as she sits at her sewing machine in Primp and Ribbon Alterations, altering clothing and applying for jobs she never gets, she receives a letter addressed to someone called Gertrude from someone called Edgar.  It’s a love letter and includes an engagement ring which fits Billie’s finger – all very interesting and puzzling.  To add to this, she then meets wealthy, handsome Avery Webster, whose parents own Webster Cottage, a large house by the sea.  He invites her to a party there, at which she sees a woman murdered.  Billie, as one of the last people to see her alive and the first to see her dead, decides to do a bit of investigating on her own. 

The plot twists and turns as life in Eastport goes on.  Billie continues to receive letters and phone calls connected to Gertrude, while discovering secrets and attracting unwanted attention from the man in a fedora and other unlikely characters, as well as the local police.  Above all she tries to understand what Avery is thinking, because romance is as interesting as investigation. 

Billie is a great character, sharp, bright and rather daring.  She lives with her grandparents and yearns for more from life than collecting her grandmother’s strawberry syrup and knee rouge.  She rides a bicycle when she can’t steal her grandfather’s car.  Her relationship with Avery provides a constant, if erratic, thread throughout the book, ending with an interesting suggestion that requires her most careful consideration.  

This book manages combines violent crime with romance and a slight touch of weirdness.  The author writes with flair and a nice sprinkling of wit.  The atmosphere of the early 1960s is maintained throughout with small references to the music, the television, the food and the society.  The opening quotation sets the tone, each chapter opens with a piece of essential information on etiquette, and the footnotes provide useful information on etymological and other matters.  This is an entertaining and interesting first book and readers may well hope for more.
-------
Reviewer: Jo Hesslewood 

Anna Fitzgerald Healy grew up on a small island in Maine. Her writing is largely informed by her childhood in rural New England and cold winter nights curled up watching black-and-white movies. Her writing has been featured in several literary magazines and short story anthologies, including Mystery Tribune, the Hoxie Gorge Review, and Brigid’s Gate Press. Anna works in Los Angeles, where she lives in a miniature castle in the Hollywood Hills. 

Jo Hesslewood.  Crime fiction has been my favourite reading material since as a teenager I first spotted Agatha Christie on the library bookshelves.  For twenty-five years the commute to and from London provided plenty of reading time.  I am fortunate to live in Cambridge, where my local crime fiction book club, Crimecrackers, meets at Heffers Bookshop .  I enjoy attending crime fiction events and currently organise events for the Margery Allingham Society.