Book Review: The Ghost and the Dead Deb

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

The Ghost and the Dead Deb     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Alice Kimberly
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Supernatural
Series: Haunted Bookshop # 2
Berkley, Sept 2005, $5.99, 260 pp.

The Buy the Book Bookstore in Rhode Island, co-owned by genteel widow woman Penelope Thornton McClure and her Aunt Sadie, is haunted by the spirit of Jack Shepard, a private eye who was killed there fifty years ago while working a case. Pen is the only one who can communicate telepathically with the ghost in her dreams.

She is excited that true crime writer Angel Stark is giving a reading at her store from a book she wrote about the death of her friend Bethany . At the reading, Bethany’s sister Vicky makes a scene before being escorted out by friends and Angel flirts with Sadie’s friend’s nephew Johnny. The next day Angel’s body is found in the water a rope around her neck. Pieces of the same rope were found in Johnny’s truck. During the same time period Vicky goes missing. Johnny is the number one suspect especially since he disappeared but Pen doesn’t believe he is a killer and with help from Jack, she sets out to prove it.

Although it sounds paradoxical this is a hard boiled cozy; Jack is a Philip Marlow type while Pen is act like Miss Marple. This is a beguiling and bewitching mystery that will enchant readers as an old fashioned protagonist partners with a gruff ghost amusingly trying to blunt his sharp opinions in order not to offend Penelope’s sensibilities. Alice Kimberly is a talented storyteller who allows the reader the fantasy of believing a ghost can be confined to a bookstore and fall for the present owner. There are plenty of separate twists and turns and red herrings that will maintain reader interest in the who-done-it, but it is the ghost and the bookstore owner who make the tale.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner