Jack Shepard, the ghost PI who haunts Buy The Book, also crossed paths with Geist back in 1948 while on another case. He was investigating a local district attorney who was cheating on his wife. One of the interesting twists I like about the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries series, and there’s a lot to like, is the way one of Jack’s old cold cases dovetails with the investigation Pen gets involved with. Sometimes the tie between the cases is obvious, but the novel takes unexpected twists and turns that always keep me turning pages to see if I’ve got everything figured out. In the end both cases get solved.
As always, the book is fast-paced. The authors deliver that speed effortlessly and move the novel’s actions around town instead of stagnating in one place. The dialogue is also exceptionally well done also. Knowing that a husband and wife are writing the books sometimes makes me wonder if they each write from a particular character’s point of view or if they have learned to write both points of view.
I always block out the time to read these books from cover to cover. Or as close to that as I can manage. The mysteries are challenging and interesting enough that I want to know if I’m as sleuthy as I like to think I am.
Like all the other books in the series, The Ghost and the Femme Fatale is a lighthearted romp with plenty of guesswork. Every time I thought I’d figured out who had done it in this one, that person ended up dead. The false leads were played perfectly and fairly. And this one kept me guessing all the way until the final few pages. Mystery novels just don’t get any better than this.
If you haven’t picked up a Haunted Bookshop Mystery before, this is a really good one to start with. You don’t have to worry about spoilers. If you like this one, you can go back and hunt down the earlier books.
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