Review--Haunted Homicide by Lucy Ness

 

Avery Morgan has been hired to breathe new life into the Portage Path Women's Club, but first she'll have to deal with a dead body and a meddling ghost.

Avery Morgan has had a harrowing first week on the job as manager of the Portage Path Woman's Club. Not only is she in charge of a grand old home with a mountain of maintenance problems and scheduling nightmares--thanks to a recent fire in the Marigold meeting room--but she's also got Muriel Sadler to deal with. Muriel is the current president of the club, the one "nay" vote when the rest of the board voted "aye" to hiring Avery.

After a morning of dealing with another one of Muriel's snits and a meeting with the delicious and delightfully unsettling Ben Harkness, who will be handling renovations in the fire-damaged portions of the house, the last thing Avery needs is for one of the fuses to blow. Again.

She grabs her handy flashlight and heads into the basement, where she stumbles across Muriel's body. She also stumbles across an unexpected helper, Clemmie Bow, the ghost of a young woman who was accidentally killed in the building almost a hundred years ago.

Together the Clemmie and Avery are determined to solve Muriel's murder before the killer sends Avery to join Clemmie on the other side.

 

 

I picked up Lucy Ness’ Haunted Homicide in the mood for a good paranormal cozy mystery. It was definitely a cozy mystery and there was definitely a ghost in the story, but alas, it wasn’t the paranormal novel I was hoping for. It was still a decent read and a very good mystery that kept me guessing, but I guess I had hoped for a bit more ghostly action.

Avery has taken on a new job of club manager at a ritzy sort of women’s’ club in Ohio. She’s in for a challenge though when the president of the women’s club doesn’t really like her…or anyone for that matter. Avery was actually hired by the board who’s a step above Muriel as club president. It doesn’t take long for Avery to realize that Muriel is out to get Avery, in the sense that she wants Avery out of her job so her granddaughter can have it instead.

Avery is startled that not long into her new job, she finds Muriel dead in the club basement. She’s further taken by surprise when a young women dressed in Flapper’s attire appears. Avery is not a stranger to ghosts, in fact she left her New York home with her aunt because she wanted to escape the ghost-life. What is even more shocking to Avery is that some of the club members want Avery to look into the death of Muriel.

I found this part odd. Yes, the club members are an older sort of crow whereas Avery is just under 30, but it still left me baffled that they requested Avery to look into the murder instead of you know, the police or even a private detective. But Avery finds herself doing exactly that.

It’s not long before she runs into the ghost at the club again and learns that Clemmie was accidentally killed when the club used to be a hidden speak easy back in the day. She’s been in the basement of the club ever since and she’s the one who saw Muriel get thrown down the steps and is Avery’s only lead in the mystery of Muriel’s death.

I was surprised to find that Avery has two possible suitors in this installment. I can see both guys being potential love interests in this series, but alas, Jack, the restoration artist who was hired to repair fire damage done to a room, is engaged. Or possibly engaged to be engaged. Jack and this “other” girl are sort of expected to be together. I was never quite clear if they were literally engaged as I don’t suspect there was ring on this other woman, but he’s definitely seeing her. The other possible love interest for Avery is Oz, who just happens to be the lead detective in the investigation to Muriel’s murder. I found I liked his character a whole lot more. Perhaps because he was most definitely single and Jack’s relationship status is what you would call “complicated.”

The whodunit of the mystery was a little too easy, I did narrow it down to two suspects but immediately disregarded one when it became too predictable. The reasoning behind it was little on the flat side. I felt like it was suddenly just thrust at us for shock value as there was no hint of this kind of deception at all throughout the book. There’s still the very clear “someone is hiding something” vibe to the story, but I felt like it could’ve been something with a little more depth.

I’m still on the fence if I want to continue this series or not. It was cute for sure and the mystery was pretty decent, I really had just hoped for more “ghostliness” than what we had. It still made for a cute and fun mystery and Clemmie was just “the bees’ knees!” She was by far one of the coolest characters of this book. She’d be the reason I’d come back…hopefully she’d bring some ghost friends to the mix though. If you’re looking for a nice cozy mystery with just a touch of the paranormal, Haunted Homicide would be the one to start with!

 

Overall Rating 3.5/5 stars