In The Ghost and the Dead Deb by Cleo Coyle, Penelope Thornton-McClure hosts a new book signing at Buy the Book, which she runs with her Aunt Sadie. Renowned party girl Angel Stark has written a true crime book about the strangling of a debutante, Bethany Blake, towards the end of a party that Angel herself attended. The book gets explicit in naming young heirs and heiresses from the upper crust Newport, RI society and their heavy partying ways. Pen becomes alarmed when a woman arises in the crowd and heckles the writer, but things go fine until after the book event when Angel is almost hit by a Jaguar. She takes off with Johnny, the nephew of Aunt Sadie’s friend Bud Knapp, and no one sees her alive again, leaving the missing Johnny as the police’s chief suspect, especially once they discover that he was the chief suspect in Bethany’s murder too.
Pen gets involved in trying to solve the murder, with the help of the ghost of Jack Shepherd, the private investigator who was murdered in 1949 in the very bookstore that Pen jointly owns with her Aunt Sadie and which he can’t leave. Things get even more complicated when not only Angel and Johnny disappear but also Victoria Banks, the heckler, who turns out to be the younger sister of the murdered Bethany.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which was even more interesting and clever than the first book in the series, The Ghost and Mrs. McClure. The plot of The Ghost and the Dead Deb had more depth than in the previous book, with some interesting scenes in which Pen joins Jack in his world, complete with 1940s’ outfits.
One of the cleverest scenes is where Johnny approaches Pen to ask for help when the police have been seeking Johnny for the murder of Angel. The Quibblers, which Pen and Jack call the local business association, put Johnny on trial for the murders of both Bethany Banks and Angel Stark, and each selects a role from the court to play. This proves to be an entertaining way of allowing Johnny to tell his story without its becoming a tiring monologue.
The audio version of this book primarily contains the narration of Caroline Shaffer, who plays the role of narrator Pen for most of the book. But for the few chapters that feature 3rd person narration centered around Jack’s life, Traber Burns plays this role. Both do strong jobs with their performances, though the voices don’t really seem to match each other well.
I highly recommend The Ghost and the Dead Deb for people who enjoy cozy mysteries, paranormal or not. Those who do like paranormal mysteries will appreciate the angle of the ghost of Jack Shepherd. However, Jack seems like such a real individual that even those who don’t generally like paranormal mysteries can still have fun with this book too. I give it five stars.
I receives this book for free for review purposes, but that had no influence on the content of my review.
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