Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Divorce Is Murder | 2019 | Elka Ray | Buy |
Divorce Is Murder opens with Toby Wong returning to her hometown on Vancouver Island after time away, only to run into Josh Barton, the man who broke her heart at summer camp as a teenager. Now a wealthy entrepreneur, Josh wants to divorce Tonya, the woman who made Toby’s adolescence miserable. When Tonya turns up dead shortly after Toby takes the case, Josh becomes the prime suspect, and Toby finds herself investigating a murder that involves her oldest resentments and her most complicated feelings.
The Vancouver Island setting gives the series a specific coastal texture, and Ray draws on her own upbringing in Victoria to ground the geography and social dynamics. The tone is lighter than her Vietnam novels, with mystery fiction that has humor and warmth, where the protagonist’s relationships matter as much as the crime.
The series is well-suited to readers who want engaging mysteries without the grimmer edge of contemporary crime fiction.