Heiress on Fire was the first book in this series featuring super-wealthy Indigo-Daisy Violet-Amber Royce Hasluck-Jones-Bombberg and her Extremely Unique Personal Assistant, Esmerelda. There is sufficient mention and explanation of their back story in this book to be able to read this one as a stand-alone.

After the unfortunate events in the first volume, Indigo has taken up residence in her mother’s pool house in Vaucluse. She has a tendency to wear very high designer heels and, while out in her grandmother’s garden, just around the corner from home, literally stumbles across a corpse. It is thought to be the body of a homeless vagrant. The deputy coroner has no desire to spend scarce resources conducting an expensive autopsy. A neighbour wants the body identified so he can be given a decent funeral. And Grandmother wants them to find Dame Elizabeth’s missing male friend, Max. Are the two one and the same?

Various clues (manicured nails, professionally bleached hair etc.) set Indigo and Esmerelda off on a trail to uncover the obviously wealthy man’s real name and find out how he died. Enter several characters from the previous book, such as demoted cops and a murdered husband’s brother, among others, and several murder attempts on Esmerelda by a villain and the plot gets quite complicated.

This is all vastly entertaining with over-the-top, not-very-multidimensional characters and improbable events. Extreme wealth with servants and planes on tap do help to make things happen so all is resolved at the end with the promise of more to come.

Reviewed by Lynne Babbage

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After bailing out of a law degree at UWA, Kellie studied Journalism and Creative Writing at Curtin. She also majored in socialising and fun but received no academic credit for this.

After graduation Kellie roamed around Europe with a backpack for a year or so. She returned to Perth to become a well-known print and TV journalist. Kellie moved east for a national show, before taking a hiatus to have kids. Heading back to work Kellie landed a role as the live to air anchor and interviewer for the Age Care Channel. She eventually became the head scriptwriter for the Health TV Network. Her kids really liked the big TV’s in the studios. Kellie was very fond of the free pastries.

After some health issues a few years ago, Kellie pressed pause on full time TV work. Her frustration about the way women were often portrayed in murder mystery books (as victims of sexual violence), the lack of laugher and the sparsity of diverse, kick-ass, female characters in said genre, caused her to complain incessantly to her friends. This caused one of them to say: ‘You’re a writer! Write a book your way!’ So, she did. Several.

In 2022 Kellie won a coveted place at the Gold Coast Film Festival, QWC Adaptable and completed Writing a TV Series at AFTRS. Heiress has been adapted for TV. Her books are repped for FTV by Bold Type. Kellie’s characters currently have more fun than she does. She hopes to change that.

Visit Kellie McCourt’s website