A Body at the Irish Book Club is the fifth book in the Mercy McCarthy Mystery series by Lucy Connelly, which continues to be one of my favourite cozy mystery series.
Title: A Body at the Irish Book Club
Author: Lucy Connelly
Series: Mercy McCarthy Mysteries #5
First Published: April 21, 2026
Publisher: Bookouture
Genres: Mystery
Acquired: from the publisher via Netgalley
*** Thank you to the publisher, Bookouture, and tour organiser, Books on Tour, for inviting me on this book tour and for providing me with an e-copy of this book for review purposes ***
Mercy McCarthy is delighted to see neighbors and friends come to the bookstore to support her sister’s book club. But at the end of the evening, Mercy stumbles across local grandmother Eva, lifelessly slumped in an armchair at the back of the store.
Even though Eva looks to be at peace, the plot thickens when Mercy notices a suspicious mark on Eva’s neck. She knows this was no accident. With so many people in the store that night, any one of them could be the killer.
Just as Mercy reads a suspicious-sounding entry for the festival’s fiction-writing contest, another body turns up on the beach. Is someone in Shamrock Cove dying for a bestseller?
I adore Mercy and Lizzie
It’s my turn on the book tour and I’m really excited to take part because this is currently one of my favourite cozy mystery series. I not only adore Mercy & her twin sister Lizzie, but also all the other residents on the enclosed court where the twins live in Shamrock Cove, Ireland. Their neighbours range in age, occupation, and hobbies, but make a nice, tight-knit group who all look out for each other and enjoy helping out in the investigations.
I also really like that Mercy & the police force have a good relationship & she often acts as a consultant to them. Of course it helps that Mercy & local detective Kieran have a friendly-&-getting-friendlier partnership that is based on trust and respect.
The mystery itself was a lot of fun – there were several suspects and I picked one person as the killer pretty early on, but seeing the whole thing play out was very interesting and not how I expected it to go.
You can definitely read this as a standalone but I highly recommend getting into the entire series as there are a few storylines that have been running in the background throughout the series. These background plots don’t take up a lot of time and I hope some of them are resolved soon but I think reading this series in order will add to the enjoyment of it as a whole.
You can buy your own copy of A Body at the Irish Book Club here.
About the Author, Lucy Connelly (aka Candace Havens)
Bestselling author Candace Havens has published more than 25 books. Her novels have received nominations for the RITA’s, Holt Medallion, Write Touch Reader Awards and National Reader’s Choice Awards. She is a Barbara Wilson Award winner. She is the author of the biography Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy and a contributor to several anthologies. She is also one of the nation’s leading entertainment journalists and has interviewed countless celebrities from George Clooney to Chris Pratt. Candace runs a free online writing workshop for more than 2000 writers and teaches comprehensive writing classes. She does film reviews with Hawkeye in the Morning on 96.3 KSCS, and is a former President of the Television Critics Association.
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