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THE GHOST AND THE DEAD MAN'S LIBRARY
by Alice Kimberly
Berkley Prime Crime, September 2006
272 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0425212653


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Alice Kimberly's ambitious series, which has already successfully blended cozy and hardboiled styles, adds thriller-style conspiracies and secret codes into the mix -- with mixed results.

The cozy side is provided by heroine Pen Thornton-McClure, who runs a bookshop along with her aunt Sadie and her young son Spencer. The hardboiled side comes from tough-guy private eye Jack Shepard, who has been haunting the bookstore since he was shot there decades earlier. Twice already they've solved crimes together, with Jack providing the experience and Pen providing the leg work.

THE GHOST AND THE DEAD MAN'S LIBRARY opens with a private collector offering rare Poe volumes on consignment. The books are so valuable that Pen and Sadie think they're worth driving through a dangerous thunderstorm to pick up. Some of the regular customers of the store think they're worth offering thousands of dollars for. And someone thinks they're worth killing for.

The previous owner dies in a suspicious fall shortly after the books are turned over. The first buyer suffers a fatal car crash, and the Poe book is the only one that can't be found in the wreckage. The police chalk it up to coincidence, but Pen's friend Brainert decides that the accidents are related to someone who wants to solve the mysterious Poe Code that is supposed to be buried in these particular editions. Jack thinks this is a lot of fuss for a few musty old books, but there's something about this case that reminds him of one that he worked shortly after the war.

I've been fond of this series since it started, and THE GHOST AND THE DEAD MAN'S LIBRARY delivers much of what I've been enjoying. The Poe Code might be tenuous (I found it the least believable part of the plot), but the mystery itself is nicely solid; every time I thought I'd figured it out too easily, a new clue was provided. A subplot with a buyer charging Pen with felony fraud was a little over the top -- surely it would be easier to try to reverse the sale before making a literal federal case out of the issue -- but another subplot, one of Spencer facing bullying at school, is beautifully handled.

And while I can't say I was as swept away with this book as I was with the previous two, Kimberly must be applauded for stepping outside of what was threatening to become a rigid pattern of Jack and Pen solving only mysteries that happened within the bookstore.

This is, in short, a good book but not a great one. Although aimed mostly at people who are already reading the Haunted Bookshop series, enough detail is given that new readers can understand what is going on with Jack and Pen. But for those new readers I say, start with THE GHOST AND MRS McCLURE and read the series from the beginning. You won't regret it.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, September 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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