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The Ghost and the Dead Man’s Library
A Haunted Bookshop Mystery #3

by Alice Kimberly



      Penelope Thornton-McClure has become accustomed to life in Quindicott, co-owning a bookshop and having a resident ghost and is back for a third adventure. This time she is off with Aunt Sadie to visit Peter Chesley, once an old flame of her aunt’s and now keen to offload a set of valuable Edgar Allen Poe editions. It is the obligatory dark and stormy night when they arrive, to find Peter on his last legs and Prospero House doing its best House of Usher impression. Shortly after, he is dead - but did he fall or was he pushed, and if so by whom? Soon it seems as though owning one of these books is unlucky, and Pen has to get to the bottom of the case before she becomes a suspect in earnest. Luckily, she has wisecracking gumshoe Jack Shepard to help her out.

These books are great fun, and show signs of getting even better. We’ve met all the local characters now, and heard their histories so we can concentrate on good plots and plenty of the sort of small town coziness that this type of book is read for. Taking a leaf out of a certain other book (and why not?) there is even a code to crack, plenty of Poe information and those enthralling flashbacks to another of Jack’s cases, this time told in more detail. There is even time for a side story about bullying at Spencer’s new school - more story than words in here which is as rare as the proverbial hen’s tooth. One of the best new series in cozy crime.

The Book

Berkley Prime Crime (Penguin Group)
September 5, 2006
Paperback
0425212653
Cozy Crime - 1946 and Contemporary / Rhode Island and New York
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Excerpt
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The Reviewer

Rachel A Hyde
Reviewed 2006
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© 2006 MyShelf.com