Book

No Good Deed: Stories from Pelican Reach

Series · The Pelican Reach Mysteries

View all books in this series

by Mel Charles

Not every mystery begins with a body. At Pelican Reach, a retirement village tucked into the Sunshine Coast hinterland, the residents have earned the right to a quiet life. Most of them are still waiting for one. In six stories, a retired engineer, his border collie Specs, and a cast of neighbors with long memories and careful silences work their way through the small crimes and quieter complications of community life. A USB drive in a drainage gap. A jar of missing marmalade. A woman in unit eleven, nobody can quite account for. A brooch that went missing, came back, and shouldn't have been there in the first place. The puzzles are modest. The stakes are not. No Good Deed explores what happens when capable people, people others have long since stopped watching, decide that something isn't right. Each story stands alone. Together, they build a portrait of a community where the sharpest observations come from the ones who've learned to pay attention quietly. For readers who like their mysteries warm, their characters flawed in recognisable ways, and their resolutions earned rather than convenient. The first collection of short fiction set in the world of The Pelican Reach Mysteries.

Publication date: June 7, 2026