Ivy Malone is heading into that period of her life characterised by daily perusals of the obituary column and regular telephone check-ups on her friends to ensure that someone answers on the other end. But addition to the medications and insomnia that are becoming regular features in her world, Ivy’s found that she also suffers from another condition: invisibility. The older Ivy gets, the more she fades from the youth-oriented perceptions of those around her.

After waiting for an age at the police station to file a report regarding a missing neighbour, Ivy decides that it’s time to take matters into her own hands and to turn her invisibility into a sleuthing attribute. After all, who would suspect a LOL (little old lady) of anything suspicious? And so, Ivy plays on the expectations and generalisations of those around her to pry, prod and perform stakeouts while all the while seeming to be up to nothing more scandalous than a game of bridge. And if she gets busted? Well, a spot of feigned dodderiness should sort that out.

But Ivy’s investigations into the disappearance of her neighbour soon take a dangerous turn, and Ivy finds herself testing the limits of her invisibility…

By far the strength of Invisible is its protagonist: Ivy is smart, incisive, and hilariously self-deprecating. McCourtney does a fine job of depicting the assumptions made about senior citizens and the way that they are treated as a result, and Ivy really does come to life as a character. The standard cozy mystery elements regarding friendships with police officers, potential love interests, and the kooky best friend are all evident here, but with a protagonist of Ivy’s age, they come with a rather different perspective than a book with a younger main character. Ivy’s husband is dead, and the arrival of a new potential suitor raises a number of questions about loyalty and about whether Ivy really does wish to have someone else in her life after all these years. Her relationship with the police officer is highly platonic, and has a mother-son feel to it, while her relationship with her best friend is, well, abbreviated somewhat.

Unfortunately, though the premise is a good one, and Ivy is standout as a heroine, the plot feels a little muddled, and the circumstances behind the murder feel somewhat contrived. This may be largely due to the fact that this novel is the “setup” for the rest of the series, but I can’t help but feel that some of the threads involving Ivy’s match-making of other characters could have been pared back to keep things better streamlined. The novel also has some explicit Christian elements (not mentioned in the blurb of the book) that take up a good deal of page time, and that I felt detracted from the flow of the story. It’s not so much Ivy’s religiosity that’s an issue, but the fact that there are whole scenes devoted to musing on religion and convincing others to attend church and these feel out of place given the rest of the novel.

Still, Ivy’s a good deal of fun, and this novel’s worth a look for her wry jokes and observations alone.

Rating: (not bad)

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Other books by Lorena McCourtney: