Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Book Review: Merry Merry Ghost

Title Merry, Merry Ghost (Bailey Ruth Mysteries, No. 2)
Author Carolyn Hart
Rating ****
Tags mystery, series, bailey ruth raeburn, ghosts, heaven, arkansas 


Second in the Bailey Ruth mystery series by Carolyn Hart, about a ghost who volunteers to help people on Earth when they have serious problems. In the first book in the series Bailey Ruth helped young relatives in Adelaide, Arkansas, the town she lived in and loved while alive. In this 2nd episode in the series, Bailey Ruth is helping an orphaned four year old boy. He is left at the home of his very ill grandmother who had not known he existed. She is the last of the wealthy Pritchard family, and she has a number of heirs who are connections but not blood relatives. She is murdered before she can change her will to include her grandson. Bailey Ruth helps her learn to appear so she can write a new holographic will and get it signed. But the lawyer doesn't get the new will, and Bailey Ruth has to figure out why.

The two volumes in the series are quite similar in tone. They are light-hearted cozies. Bailey Ruth is a fun character, in Heaven but enjoying everything about Heaven AND earth. She lived vibrantly, and has the same gregarious and kind nature that she had before death.

Hart has two other series. The Death on Demand Series is a cozy mystery series about a bookstore owner and her private eye husband living on an island off the South Carolina coast. The other series is about Henry O., a retired and widowed journalist. Of the three, I like the Henry O. series best. The characterization tends to be deeper and richer. But I do enjoy the other two series as well, and am growing quite fond of Bailey Ruth, even if I find the premise kind of corny.

Publication William Morrow (2009), Hardcover, 288 pages
Publication date 2009
ISBN 0060874376 / 9780060874377

Posted via web from reannon's posterous

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