Review – Everybody Wanted Room 623

Veteran author Cecil (Cec) Murphey wrote his first mystery at age nine after he had seen an Alfred Hitchcock moved called Saboteur. A crucial scene takes place when the heroine, locked inside an office in a New York City skyscraper, writes a note in lipstick. She throws the paper out the window, and holds her compact mirror so that it reflects the sun. The note lands in front of a taxi stand, a driver picks up the note, sees her flashing sign, and rescues her.

Cec decided to try something like that. He wrote, “Help! My husband is trying to kill me.” He wrote an address of an apartment complex a block away and laid the note on the street. After what seemed like a long wait and no one picked it up, he forgot about it.

Two days later, Cec’s mother and he were in a neighborhood grocery store and the owner, Mrs. DeRuse, said, “Did you hear about all the excitement over on Second Street?” After his mother said no, Mrs. DeRuse told them that the police received a note saying the woman’s husband was trying to kill her. When they came to the house, the woman yelled and cursed the policemen.

“I did it.” Cec told them what happened and felt bad that he had caused so much trouble.

Both women told him to forget it and not to talk about it. After that, however, whenever he came into the store, Mrs. DeRuse would call out to him, “Have you written any good mysteries lately?”

More than 120 books later, Cec’s readers can say that yes, he has written some good mysteries lately. Cozy mysteries, that is. As the result of an agent-friend’s challenge, he wrote the Everybody’s Suspect in Georgia series for Barbour Publishing.

Neither Psychologist Julie West nor Pastor James Burton fancy themselves detectives until one after another of their mutual acquaintances is found murdered.

• Discover who would love Roger Harden little enough to want him dead in Everybody Loved Roger Harden.

• Why would everybody want to book room 623 when they know a murder took place there the night before? You’ll find the reason in Everybody Wanted Room 623.

• Crime doesn’t take a vacation when West and Burton agree to grant a friend her dying wish by accompanying her on an Antarctic cruise. But why would someone want to murder a dying woman who everybody called a saint? You won’t know the answer until you read Everybody Caller Her a Saint.

Cecil Murphey is the author or co-author of more than 120 books, including the bestsellers 90 Minutes in Heaven (with Don Piper), Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (with Dr. Ben Carson), and Rebel with a Cause (with Franklin Graham). Some of his newer releases include When a Man You Love Was Abused; Knowing God, Knowing Myself; and When Someone You Love No Longer Remembers. His books have sold in the millions and have brought hope and encouragement to countless readers around the world.