Movie Review: A Prescription for Murder - A Hailey Dean Mystery

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Entertaining mystery

Cons: Hallmark cheese

The Bottom Line:

Hospital setting

Another entertaining

Hailey Dean movie

Murder at a Hospital

You can set a mystery just about anywhere, and I can’t think of very many places where one hasn’t been set over the years.  A hospital is nothing new, but it can be quite creepy, which is the case in A Prescription for Murder, the second of this month’s Hailey Dean Mystery Movies.

Erica is the new administrator of the hospital, having gotten the job about a year before.  However, it appears the stress is getting to her because she has developed a heart murmur.  On the advice of the hospital’s cardiologist, she is under observation in the hospital when she takes a turn for the worse and dies.

So how does Hailey (Kelly Martin) get involved?  Her boyfriend Jonas (Matthew MacCaull) is called to do the autopsy, and he can’t figure out what actually killed her.  It doesn’t appear to be natural causes, however.  Then, when the police get involved, Finch’s (Viv Leacock) girlfriend Megan becomes the prime suspect.  So Hailey starts sleuthing to figure out what really happened to Erica.  Can she figure it out?

What makes this movie so creepy?  I think it’s the idea of being helpless in a hospital that makes me feel that way about the setting.  There is certainly nothing creepier than other Hailey Dean movies on the screen.  And maybe it’s been I’ve stayed in the hospital that makes this feel more real to me than some other settings.

Anyway, we have another solid mystery here.  While it is easy to write off one or two suspects early on (and Hailey does as well), we still have plenty of motives and suspects.  The ending was a little obvious, but there is so much going on that I thought I might be wrong.  In fact, the plot involves some good surprises along the way.

Some of those other things going on include a sub-plot involving Hailey meeting Jonas’s father.  I really enjoyed this storyline since it provided some much needed comic relief.

The story of the prisoner up for parole introduced in the previous movie also continues here.  It is obvious that Clayton Morrel (Bradley Stryker) is going to be the through line for these three movies, and also helps explain why they have made a big deal about Lauren Holly guest starring in these three movies as Paulina, the DA.

In other continuity news, they actually reference the calendar that Jonas was part of in the previous movie, which was fun.  However, they seem to have dropped the minor cliffhanger involving Hailey’s professional life from the end of the last movie.  That surprised me a bit.

Naturally, this comes with the standard Hallmark cheese factor, and again, it seems a little stronger here than in some of the other franchises.  Nancy Grace, creator of the character, has her usual cameo, although this one wasn’t quite as fun as some of them are.

While this isn’t my favorite Hallmark Mystery franchise, A Prescription for Murder still a fun way to spend a couple of hours, especially if you do like the characters.