It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder Summary | Holiday Mystery
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder: A Will, a Blizzard, and a Body That Isn’t There
Five days before Christmas, in a snowbound Colorado town owned almost entirely by one family, a housekeeper’s daughter named Ella Chambers is hired to serve drinks at the reading of a dead man’s will.
What the will says turns the room upside down. What happens on the driveway afterward turns Ella into a murder suspect.
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder by Ally Carter is a holiday romantic mystery set in the fictional mountain town of Hidden Springs, where old money, old secrets, and a fresh blizzard collide.
TL;DR: The Short Version
Ella Chambers, 26, works four jobs to chip away at her late mother’s medical debt.
When mountain magnate Trip Montgomery dies, his video will leaves one dollar each to his son and his lawyer — and everything else to his estranged grandson, Liam.
Hours later, a pool of blood appears on the manor driveway and Liam disappears. Ella, the last person seen arguing with him, becomes the prime suspect.
- The twist: Liam is alive, hiding with a bullet wound, and convinced Trip was murdered.
- The setup: A wealthy family, four founding dynasties, and a mountain everyone wants to bulldoze.
- The tone: Sharp banter, snowed-in tension, and a slow-burn second-chance romance.
It reads as a clue-driven cozy mystery with a romantic comedy engine underneath.
You May Also Like: Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line Summary: Plot & Ending
Characters in Hidden Springs
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Eleanor “Ella” Chambers | 26-year-old narrator who works multiple service jobs and becomes the prime suspect in Liam’s disappearance. |
| William “Liam” Montgomery V | Trip’s estranged grandson and an eco-architect who inherits the estate and survives a shooting. |
| William “Trip” Montgomery III | Late patriarch whose recorded video will sets the plot in motion. |
| William Montgomery IV (Bill) | Trip’s son and Liam’s father, who embezzled from the estate. |
| Cynthia Montgomery | Bill’s wife and Liam’s mother, who participated in the embezzlement. |
| Archibald Fox Sr. | Elderly former attorney for Trip and the novel’s hidden antagonist. |
| Archibald “Archie” Fox Jr. | Fox Sr.’s son and a lawyer who represents Ella. |
| Sheriff Grady Sherwood | Hidden Springs sheriff and Ella’s childhood friend. |
| Grandma Sherwood | Grady’s grandmother, who holds long-standing knowledge of town secrets. |
| Crash Ridgeway | Resort developer pushing to bulldoze Goliath Mine. |
| Patricia Ridgeway | Crash’s wife, who discovered Trip’s body. |
| Violet Ridgeway | The Ridgeways’ daughter and a reluctant ally to Ella. |
| Mallory Chambers | Ella’s deceased mother and former housekeeper at Montgomery Manor. |
| Agent Gregory | CBI officer conducting Ella’s Christmas Day interrogation. |
| The Katies | Teenagers working part-time at Daisy’s Diner. |
| Darryl | Daisy’s son and manager at the diner. |
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder Summary (Spoilers Ahead)
Spoiler warning: This section covers the plot, the reveals, and the ending.
The novel opens on Christmas Day with Ella Chambers sitting in a Colorado Bureau of Investigation interrogation room. Her recorded statements frame the entire book, cutting between the interview and the week that led to it.
Hidden Springs sits beneath a mountain controlled by the Montgomery family since the gold rush.
Four founding families — the Montgomerys, Foxes, Ridgeways, and Sherwoods — have run the town’s money, law, land, and police for a century.
Ella is summoned to Montgomery Manor five days before Christmas and assumes she is a guest. She is actually hired help for the evening, carrying trays while the town’s elite gather for the will reading.
At 5:30 p.m., Trip Montgomery’s pre-recorded video plays. He leaves one dollar to his former attorney Archibald Fox Sr., one dollar to his son Bill and daughter-in-law Cynthia, and everything else to his grandson Liam.
The room erupts. Crash Ridgeway, a developer who wants to bulldoze the old Goliath Mine for a resort, is furious. Then Liam himself walks in after years away and states flatly that the mountain stays undeveloped.
The power fails. Ella retrieves a hand-painted nutcracker from the garage and loads it into her SUV under a blanket. Outside she trades barbs with Liam in the dark, then drives home.
Minutes later, a gunshot cracks across the mountain. The next morning, Sheriff Grady Sherwood brings Ella in for questioning.
There is a large pool of blood on the manor driveway, ending in tire drag marks. Liam is missing. Ella’s blanket-wrapped nutcracker and her argument with Liam make her the prime suspect.
Lawyer Archie Fox Jr. appears out of nowhere to represent her. Meanwhile, her cleaning, tutoring, and dog-walking clients cancel one by one, and her income collapses.
Desperate, Ella hikes to a secluded treehouse where she once spent a night with Liam at sixteen. She finds him inside, alive, shot in the side and grazed on the head.
Liam refuses doctors and police. In his words, being dead keeps the shooter from coming back to finish the job. He later leaves a burner phone and a pizza at Ella’s cottage.
On the phone is a voicemail Trip left two days before his death. The old man warns that when people find out what he did, they will kill him.
Liam and Ella become a two-person investigation. Ella asks questions in person while Liam listens through a hidden earpiece, feeding her lines and reading the room from a distance.
They work through the founding families. Patricia Ridgeway admits she found Trip’s body in his dinner clothes, in front of the television, and that Trip had screamed at Bill and Fox Sr. at dinner the night before.
Grandma Sherwood supplies the sharper detail: Trip had shouted, “I know what you did, and you’ll be sorry.” She also mentions that Fox Sr.’s second wife vanished decades ago after having a daughter.
In Trip’s study, Ella and Liam crack the safe. Trip had not been dying — Liam had quietly arranged European medical care years earlier and saved his life.
They also find that Bill and Cynthia had been embezzling from Trip, and had diverted the trust fund Trip set up for Ella after her mother died. Ella had been paying rent on a cottage she already owned.
Comparing party photographs, Ella spots that an antique revolver on the study mantelpiece vanished for a stretch of the evening and was later returned facing the wrong way. That is the gun that shot Liam.
An arctic blizzard hits, and illegal bulldozing collapses Goliath Mine, sealing the mountain pass. Everyone is trapped inside Montgomery Manor for Christmas Eve.
That afternoon, someone cut the brake lines on Ella’s SUV, sending her and Liam over a hillside into the hot springs cave. They survive.
In the dining room, Ella lays out the logic. The brake line was not cut to kill Liam — Liam had named Ella his sole beneficiary, so her death was the point.
Read Also: Everyone in This Bank Is a Thief Summary: A Bank Full of Secrets
If Liam died, Ella inherited. If Ella then died without heirs, the entire Montgomery fortune reverted to her closest living relative.
Ella names Archibald Fox Sr. Her mother, Mallory Chambers, was Fox Sr.’s illegitimate daughter — proven by the antique earrings Ella wore, which belonged to Fox Sr.’s missing second wife.
Fox Sr. is Ella’s biological grandfather and the last surviving legal heir. Cornered, he pulls the revolver and fires at point-blank range.
The gun only clicks. Liam had emptied it earlier, and Sheriff Grady Sherwood steps out of the shadows with the confession on video.
The CBI makes the arrest. Bill and Cynthia face fraud and embezzlement charges and agree to full restitution. Ally Carter closes the loop on the interrogation transcript that opened the book.
On Christmas morning, Liam waits in Ella’s garage apartment with a hybrid car, Dartmouth re-enrollment papers, and Trip’s unread letter. The letter apologizes for his family’s greed and leaves her five million dollars.
With three million in restitution, Ella ends the book with eight million dollars and no debt. Liam tells her there has always been an “us,” and the two drive out of the mountain pass together.
Keep Exploring: How to Cheat Your Own Death Summary: Book 3 Recap & Spoilers
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Holiday Mystery / Cozy Romantic Suspense
- Core Narrative Tropes: Presumed dead, enemies-to-lovers, secret dynasty, snowed-in forced proximity, disputed will, hidden paternity
- Tone & Atmosphere: Witty and fast-paced, with festive small-town charm layered over blizzard isolation and surveillance tension
- Primary Conflict: Ella must clear her name in Liam’s apparent murder while the pair secretly hunt whoever shot him and killed Trip
- Pacing Style: Quick chapters alternating between Christmas Day interrogation transcripts and chronological flashbacks
- ISBN: 978-0063387027
- Pages: 304
- Book Structure: Author’s Note, Prologue, 64 numbered chapters, 19 interstitial CBI interrogation transcripts, Acknowledgments, About the Author
Books Like It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter — A companion holiday mystery with rival sleuths, a snowed-in setting, and a high-society murder.
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes — An unexpected billionaire’s will, disinherited relatives, and a fortune tied to hidden conditions.
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson — A comedic, clue-forward mystery built around a wealthy family and a narrator who addresses the reader directly.
Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano — A witty romantic mystery about a stressed single mother pulled into a crime she never planned to commit.
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman — A cozy ensemble mystery where amateur sleuths dig into old secrets inside a closed community.
Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto — A rom-com crime caper with family chaos, rapid pacing, and a body that must be hidden.
