Murder at the Spirit Lounge

It’s December in the beach town of Gore-on-Sea, and Nora Breen, recently a cloistered Carmelite nun, is drawn into the intrigue of a séance by friend and Detective Inspector Rideout. She is not invited to attend, but Rideout is. The medium, Mrs. Chimes, dies during the séance, murdered as we later find out, and all who were present seem marked for strange and dreadful deaths of their own. The connection is discovered only after much sleuthing, and Nora, with her sharp intelligence and easy manner, is able to uncover the striking details needed to unravel this. There is, however, so much more to this book than its complex mystery. The richly drawn characters, quirky situations of life in this odd town, and spectacularly inventive and colorful descriptive prose used by the author (portraits “rendered in gravy-brown paint”) make this captivating to read. As it is the second in a series, readers can only hope for number three.—Danise Hoover