This charming little story takes place in Fairmont Manor, a Seniors’ Care Home, where author Mel Anastasiou’s octogenarian character, Stella Ryman, currently resides. 

Stella doesn’t think she should be there and is bored with her routine. After a very full life as a teacher and school librarian, she resents being cooped up like a prisoner in what she considers a run-down care home, and she misses the freedom she once had. But this is where she has been placed after a brief illness. Her house and all her belongings have been sold, and she has no alternative but to accept the lot assigned to her.

As a well-educated and knowledgeable woman, she does have a reputation for being a detective who can solve mysteries, so her fellow residents (or “inmates” as Stella calls them) come to her whenever they need help with something unexplainable. Stella enjoys being known as a resident sleuth.

Anastasiou’s cast of characters is a delightful mix of the “almost blind, the lame and the confused” and the dialogue between them is amusing and fun to listen to. The reader is immediately drawn into the atmosphere of a senior’s care home.

Stella does have one dear friend at Fairmont, Thelma Hu, a small woman who is sight-impaired: “I’m not blind, I just have macular degeneration,” she insists.  She also has a painful hip, which causes her to limp. 

Stella takes Thelma under her wing by holding her arm when they walk the corridors together and shielding her from the eyes of the inefficient care workers. She does this because she believes they will insist that Thelma be taken to hospital for a hip operation. Like all the residents, Stella believes that no one ever returns to Fairmont Manor from hospital. They either die or are placed somewhere else after surgery or a health issue like she was. If that happens to Thelma, Stella will miss her.

As the amusing daily routine of Fairmont Manor continues, Stella is asked to solve the mystery of a locked door, knowing the cardinal rule at the care home is that no one can lock their doors. And then there are the mysteries of the missing keys, the missing medication, and the suspicious new care worker.  The complicated layout of the care home has all corridors named for flowers—Chrysanthemum, Daffodil etc.—and that makes the solving of mysteries more difficult for Stella.

We gradually meet all the residents and staff at the Manor including Mad Cassandra, the ghost; Reliza, the pleasant young care worker; The Greek Chorus group who knit all day; Mrs. Waldren (the Director at Fairmont nicknamed “The Warden” by Stella); Mr. Vaughan, one of the more pleasant directors on the Board who is in a wheelchair himself; overworked young Dr. Terry, who is in love with Reliza, and Riley, the new care worker, who turns out to be her ex-husband. A complicated mix indeed.

Every morning all the residents gather in the Rose Corridor to wait for breakfast that is usually only tea, toast, and marmalade.

But the biggest mystery is still to be solved, and this is where the story really becomes exciting and moves at a much faster pace. Thelma goes missing and Stella is frantic to find her. When she finally sees her being taken off in an ambulance from the front door of the Care Home, Stella is determined she will somehow leave the Fairmont herself, locate Thelma, and bring her back.

When she unexpectedly receives an enormous amount of money from Mr. Vaughan, who tells her to put it to good use, Stella makes plans—that they include escaping with Riley in his old car, flying across the city she never thought she would see again, visiting two hospitals (one under construction, making progress even more difficult) where she hopes to find Thelma, and meeting a whole cast of fascinating characters along the way. And, of course, solving additional mysteries as she goes.

The conversational writing of the Bowen Island-based author is easy to read, and her characters are fun and lively. Stella Ryman is a woman who is not yet ready to sit back and let the parade pass her by. Instead, she craves being in the thick of things again, a feat she manages to achieve on her adventure to find her friend.

She wanted to find crime and be a real detective, and somehow the author managed to allow an octogenarian sleuth in a senior’s care home to do just that. Again, I should have said. Stella Ryman and the Search for Thelma Hu is Stella’s latest case, following Book 2 (The Labours of Mrs Stella Ryman: Further Fairmount Manor Mysteries) and the inaugural Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries.