The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

Alice Kimberly

I loved how this story began – the 1940’s feel with dames, Doll Face, and gams. The cozy genre rarely gives this type of atmosphere and the hard-boiled detective flare is a refreshing start to a new-to-me series.

Penelope Thorton-McClure (Pen to her friends) decides to move to Qunidicott, Rhode Island to help her aunt keep open a small and not very profitable family bookstore. With the small inheritance from her recently deceased husband, Pen and her young son move to this out of the way hamlet in hopes of starting over and getting as far away from the wealthy and annoying McClure family as she can.

---

“Now I was a full fledged co-owner of my own failing business”

---

Deciding that her money would be best used by expanding the bookshop into the area next door, Penelope does not realize that she has awoken a local ghost. Actually, this spirit is Jack Sheppard a 1940’s detective that newly murdered author Timothy Brennan has been using as his inspiration for a fading book series.

---

“Where’s a psychotic delusion of a ghostly detective when you really need one?”

---

After the mysterious death of Mr. Brennan, Pen starts to hear voices, not just any voice, the voice of Jack Sheppard. It would be so nice if others could hear him, but of course it is only Pen and with Jack’s help, they set off to find the killer of the annoying Mr. Brennan.

Now, Buy the Book, is overwhelmed with the rabid fans of the recently departed author and all the weirdo’s and crackpot are filling the store with their own illusions of the dead and if they can make a buck or two in doing so, then let the fun times begin.

---

“How nice, I thought, to be informed that I was mentally unstable by a woman who believes in elves and fairies”.

---

With the help of the disembodied voice, Pen puts together the wherefores of the mystery that surrounds them and with a small cast brings the events leading up to the murder to focus and therefore solving the crime in the brink of time to save her bookstore and to sell out all remaining copies of the dead man’s books.

The “why” of the mystery was easy to figure out, the how was unique, but the humor of 1940’s Jack is what makes this book and will bring me back to the subsequent books in the series.