Mad Mabel

• Author: Sally Hepworth
• Genre: Mystery
• Publication Date: April 21, 2026
• Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

From Sally Hepworth, the New York Times bestselling author of The Soulmate and The Good Sister, comes a twist-filled, darkly funny mystery about the two kinds of people no one ever expects to be murderers: little girls and old ladies.

Meet Mad Mabel.

Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She’s lived on her idyllic street, Kenny Lane, for sixty years–longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else’s business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past that she has worked exceedingly hard at concealing. Because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.

When a new little girl (talkative, curious, nosy) moves into the neighborhood and stops at nothing to befriend Elsie, her carefully-constructed life threatens to come crashing down as the secrets in Elsie’s past start coming to light. Who was “Mad Mabel” fifty years ago? Who is Elsie Fitzpatrick today? And if the past has a habit of repeating itself, who has the most to lose?

Told with Sally Hepworth’s twists, humor, charm, and heart, MAD MABEL is novel that weaves past and present together–through the power of justice and redemption, and all the way to its stunning conclusion.

Sally Hepworth is one of my favorite mystery writers out there, and I always love the new and creative stories, characters, and dynamics that she brings to the table. So naturally, there was no way I’d miss her newest book, featuring an old lady with secrets in her past. 

Elsie has a carefully constructed life that she’s maintained for much of her life. She lives in a little house on a tidy little street where everyone knows everything about each other. Mostly, that is. Elsie might be 81, but her mind is sharp as a tack, even if her personality seems designed to push people away. However, she maintains a close relationship with a woman who befriended her in school and has stayed her friend ever since, Daphne. I am not the person who usually pulls quotes, but this one really got me because it celebrates a bond that is extremely valuable in my own life: 

“There is no greater love story than platonic female friendship.”

The story is told in dual timelines: the first is Elsie as an old woman, living amongst the drama that occurs on her street full of busybodies , and the second is Mabel as a young girl, recalling major events in her life. Elsie is prickly, actively pushes people away, and is so incredibly sarcastic and dry-humored that I couldn’t help but love her. She’s not the sweet, grandmotherly type who bakes treats and calls everyone darling…she’s far more likely to sprinkle plenty of highly inappropriate words, and it’s that which won her a lot of points with me. But after the death of her neighbor and her de facto inheritance of his “deranged Chihuahua, Nugget,” who barks incessantly, someone slips a copy of a newspaper article under her door about ‘Mad Mabel,’ the youngest person to be sentenced for murder in Australia, at 15 years old. 

This brings us back to her childhood, when she was Mabel, or more commonly, Mad Mabel. She comes from a pretty dysfunctional family—her father is always away on business, gallivanting to glamorous destinations with his wife while Mabel is frequently left home in the care of her aunt Cecily. Even when her parents were around, Mabel gravitates more towards Cess and eventually her aunt’s best friend, Ness. It broke my heart to see a young girl so traumatized by her own family along with childhood experiences, although Cess and Ness offer Mabel stable, supportive, and encouraging relationships, even as the relationships with both of her parents and her peers are so traumatic. Mabel is described as very tall (6’) and skinny, with red hair, and that won her no friends—she was intensely bullied, and labeled as a murderer, calling her Mad Mabel.

I honestly felt for young Mabel. It wasn’t surprising that Elsie is so guarded and prickly after how she was raised. It’s clear that some kind of murder had occurred since Mabel was convicted, but it takes time before this is revealed. In the meantime, readers learn that a series of deaths occur throughout her early years, but understanding how she plays into those requires readers to truly understand Mabel and the forces shaping who she was. As for Elsie, I adored her curmudgeonly character, and had immense empathy for her as a child. But it isn’t until seven-year-old Persephone, her neighbor, decides that she wants to be friends with Elsie, that those walls start to slowly crumble, even as we get closer to what actually happened.

Overall, this was a truly enjoyable read and I loved how the story had unfolded. There were some surprising twists that I never saw coming, but there were some other twists that were a little on the predictable side. The pacing was pretty fast-paced, and I was surprised at how many heavy themes arose while reading, even if it was done sensitively. In the story are depictions of neglect, bullying, homophobia, suicide, and grief, and all of them were done so sensitively and with empathy. This was the kind of book that I couldn’t put down, and I wanted to see not only what happened to Elsie and learn what earned Mabel the nickname ‘Mad Mabel’ and her murder conviction, but also to see how things changed in her life through the relationships with the people on her street, particularly Persephone. I found the story to be heartwarming and really a wonderful book.

Bottom line: An engrossing and surprisingly heartwarming story about an elderly woman and her life, with a found family theme that left me feeling completely satisfied by the end. 

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