Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780425199442
Berkley Prime Crime
272 Pages
$7.99; $7.99 Amazon
September 6, 2005
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Don't haunt the customers...
This was the only rule bookshop owner and widow Penelope Thornton-McClure had given her resident ghost, hard-boiled PI Jack Shepard. But when the hot young author Angel Stark arrives at the store to promote her latest, a true crime novel, Jack can hardly contain himself. After all, this is his specialty!
Angel's book is an unsolved mystery about a debutante found strangled to death. And it's filled with juicy details that point a finger at a number of people in the deb's high society circle. But when the author winds up dead too - in precisely the same way - Pen is fast on the case...which means Jack is too. After all, a ghost detective never rests in peace.
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When young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure moved her son and her life to a small town in Rhode Island, she knew things were going to be different. She just didn't realize how different, until the ghost of a 1940's gumshoe named Jack Shepard entered her life. Now Jack has helped Penelope realize that she's stronger than she thought and can face things she never thought possible - including the onslaught of her wealthy in-laws, who have been doing their best to run roughshod over her for years, and she's finding a new world opening up...
When a young author named Angel Stark arrives at Pen's bookstore for a promotion on her new book, Pen doesn't expect things to get heated. But she should have, considering the book is about a dead debutante named Bethany Banks whose murder is still unsolved. When Angel is attacked outside the store and local boy Johnny Napp arrives to help, Pen doesn't realize that when Johnny leaves with Angel it will unleash a slew of events that will bring Bethany's last night on earth back to the forefront; and that there's more story yet to be told, and Johnny might not only be who he says he is, but have a decidedly bigger role in it.
But when Angel disappears, along with Bethany's sister Victoria, the past comes back to haunt everyone involved, and Pen may need Jack's help more than she thinks in order to keep an innocent man from being wrongfully put away forever...
When Angel's book comes out there's obviously people who don't like it; namely, those that are participants in the story. All of them are from wealthy backgrounds and thus far have been able to protect themselves from the notoriety of murder. Yet the book promises to lay bare the details of the gruesome night Bethany was found strangled, and someone is obviously guilty.
But when Angel herself first has run-ins with several people - the dead girl's sister, for one - and then is later found murdered in a similar manner, it's obvious someone wanted to make sure this was her first and last book. But since Johnny is the main suspect, Pen feels that she needs to find the truth, because he's been dating her clerk Mina she thinks someone has it all wrong. So she enlists Jack to help her seek the real killer since it seems the police are focusing only on one person.
This is the second book in the Haunted Bookshop series, and I can honestly say that I loved it just as much as the first. Penelope is beginning to accept Jack's presence in her life, and even depend on him when the need arises. She's also becoming a stronger, more resilient person, and I really like that.
I also love the dream sequences where Penelope is able to travel backward in time to Jack's world; it's always for a purpose - to help her figure out things in her own world. I'm not going to lie; I really love that period of time, being a huge classic film buff myself, and any time I find a book that can pull me into it, I'm loving every second of it. This series is able to do just that, and I relish it.
When the ending comes and the murderer is revealed, it's more a sense of justice that is felt than any evildoing on the part of the murderer, and that's fine by me. The writing is taut, the words flow, the story is well-told and I marvel at the fact that the author(s) can take us to the past so easily and make it believable. My only hope would be that when this series does make its final episode that somehow, those 'higher ups' as it were, would find that Jack is worthy of being given a second chance in life. After all, miracles happen every day if you just look around, and this would be no different. Recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Dead-Haunted-Bookshop-Mystery/dp/0425199444/ref
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2484637662
More on the Haunted Bookshop Series: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/series/haunted-bookshop/
More on Alice Kimberly: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/alice-alfonsi/
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