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THE GHOST AND THE DEAD DEB
by Alice Kimberly
Berkley, September 2005
272 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0425199444


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Penelope Thornton-McClure lives with her aunt and helps run her bookstore, Buy the Book. They have invited Angela Stark to speak about her new book. Stark is a hot new author with a best-selling true crime book about the unsolved murder of a friend.

Stark is not a very nice person and many of her prejudices appear in her book. At the book signing, several angry people, who either appear in her book or are related to people in her book, confront Stark. In the parking lot after the signing, Stark is almost run over. When Angela Stark disappears the next day, Penelope is suspicious.

The police are suspicious that both Stark and one of the people who confronted her the previous night have both disappeared. When the body of Stark's confronter is found murdered all bets are off. Penelope, with help from the resident ghost, must solve the murder before an innocent person is sent to jail or the murderer finds another victim.

PI Jack Shepard died somewhat mysteriously in the 1940s. He has no memory of why he was killed and the police have never been able to explain it. For some reason, his ghost haunts Buy the Book. In addition, Penelope is the only one that can hear him speak. Jack is, or rather was, a hard-boiled detective so his opinions are radically different from prim Penelope's. They make an interesting detecting duo as they approach investigation from the opposite ends of the genre.

THE GHOST AND THE DEAD DEB approaches the concept of the true crime genre from the angle that true crime authors are out for themselves rather than justice. Angela Stark has no concern about the people she hurts with her book even though she claims to have been friends with them. In addition, she does not say anything new about the crime or investigation. In fact, she does not include all of the information and evidence that appeared in the investigation. Stark is merely trying to capitalize on the interest the public has on gruesome events.

The idea of a resident ghost assisting in a modern day investigation is somewhat unsettling. When many authors include the supernatural in their books, the result is more of a farce or a strange sexual fantasy than a coherent complex mystery. THE GHOST AND THE DEAD DEB is neither a complex mystery, nor a sexual fantasy nor a farce. This book is a cozy but is not sickeningly sweet or cute.

The use of the supernatural makes the book, the second to feature Penelope and Jack, more interesting than it would have been for a prim single mother to try to investigate a murder. I am not a huge fan of the typical cozy so by adding a hard-talking ghost to the plot, I found myself enjoying this book more than I normally would.

Reviewed by Sarah Dudley, September 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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