For Better or Murder (A Holy Terrors Mystery, 4) by Simon R. Green Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Holy Terrors #4
Pages: 192
Published by Severn House on May 5, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
It’s wedding season with a spooky twist! The Holy Terrors are trying to tie the knot while solving a ghostly murder in the latest witty, creeptastic paranormal mystery from
New York Times
bestselling British fantasy author Simon R. Green.
There are those who say seagulls cry over the sins of mankind. And that if we could only get our act together, they could stop crying …
Holy Terrors dream team—actress Diana Hunt and her partner in crime (solving) young bishop Alistair Kincaid—are getting married! The plan is to hold a small ceremony with just some family and friends at a charming and secluded hotel in Cornwall. But in true Holy Terrors fashion, the Pale Rider hotel carries the legend of a killer ghost rider and his skeleton horse, which sets the perfect tone for a cheerful occasion!
Trying to make the best out of the stormy weekend and seemingly haunted place, spirits fall even lower when one of the guests is found murdered in the hallway. Did the legendary pale rider strike again or is there something more sinister going on—and will Diana and Alistair finally have the chance to say yes?
The “hugely entertaining” (
Booklist
) Holy Terrors Mysteries are perfect for fans of Simon R. Green’s urban fantasy novels, authors Jim Butcher, Terry Pratchett and Ben Aaronovitch, as well as those who enjoy
American Horror Story
,
The X-Files
, and murder mysteries with a supernatural twist.
My Review:
It feels like this latest book in the Holy Terrors series begins at the end. The Bishop and the Actress, Bishop Alistair Kincaid and actress Diana Hunt, are about to tie the knot. At the end of Which Witch? (the previous book in the series) the Bishop popped the question and the Actress said yes. THE question. They’re getting married.
Which is not nearly as crazy an idea as it would have been if this story had been set back in the early 1900s when that catchphrase was both suggestive AND popular. (The original Saint series by Leslie Charteris used that phrase A LOT and always with the double entendre firmly evident – double entendre intended.)
Alistair and Diana met in the first book, The Holy Terrors, and were dubbed by the press as “The Holy Terrors”, when they filmed a spooky reality TV show that had much too much fake spookiness – along with entirely too many real murders. That first book set up the whole series – and the relationship between Alistair and Diana.
A relationship that, up until AFTER the fade to black at the end of this latest story, hasn’t been nearly as salacious as Diana would like it to be. And it will be once they manage to FINALLY tie that marital knot.
But it’s never that simple when the Holy Terrors are involved. First, there’s the press. Currently, they are media darlings, which has given Diana’s acting career a serious boost. But she’s not interested in the ‘paps’ running or ruining her wedding. So they’ve chosen a venue as far from the madding crowd as they can manage. A remote inn so close to the end of Cornwall that if it were any further out it would fall into the Atlantic Ocean.
Of course, the place is haunted. Or so the proprietors claim. Of course the atmosphere is beyond spooky and Mother Nature seems determined to whip the dramatic pauses and power failures up to eleven. Of course, the wedding party is a motley crew filled with hidden agendas and open resentments.
So when the bodies start dropping, neither Alistair, Diana OR the reader are surprised. But it is still fun to watch Alistair take all of the atmospheric spooky stage setting apart with his bare hands – and his logical mind – one more time.
Escape Rating B-: This reads like it could be the final book in the Holy Terrors series. And that’s probably for the best. (Yes, I know I need to explain that.)
I read this author for the snarkitude. He has always had a great line in dry, wry, intelligent banter, and that’s still true. So I’m not sorry I read this at all.
That being said, the plot is utterly predictable. It’s not just that every story in this series hangs off the same scaffolding, it’s that it’s the same scaffolding as one of the author’s other recent series, the Ishmael Jones series.
The investigators (Alistair and Diana, Ishmael and Penny) find themselves in a situation that is presented as being paranormal or supernatural in origin. Or, at least, someone tries to fool them into thinking it is. But neither Alistair nor Ishmael are fooled – Alistair out of faith and Ismael out of experience. The story is in taking the illusion apart as the bodies drop from human causes out of human motivations.
Ishmael Jones series actually works a little better because there’s an SFnal element in Ishmael’s background that allows some of the ends to be supernatural or extra-terrestrial and have that work. OTOH, Ishmael and Penny can’t really reach a happy ending – for other factors in Ishmael’s origin – but Alistair and Diana can. And quite possibly do at the end of THIS book.
So this turned out to be fun, but only because I was already invested in the series. That fun relies on prior knowledge of the series – while the series as a whole hasn’t been all that compared to the author’s earlier works like Nightside and The Secret Histories.
I also had the feeling, particularly with this last book, that this whole thing relies more than a bit on some particularly British humorous stock characters that I just didn’t have the cultural background for. Or something like that. I had this constant sense that I was just missing some nuance around the edges but didn’t know what it was precisely enough to go hunting for it.
Your reading mileage may vary.
