Review

For fans of:  Victoria Laurie
 
When contractor and spirit medium Mel Turner agrees to help fix up the home of local disabled man Monty Parker, she figures it’ll be a relatively simple job; after all, unlike most of her projects, there aren’t any ghosts to wrangle at Monty’s house – just a team of unskilled volunteers. But then one of the volunteers finds a dead body in the shed abutting Monty’s property, and things become infinitely more complicated. It turns out the body has ties to the house next door – a house the neighborhood kids have dubbed “the Murder House” and which is rumored to be haunted as all get-out. And thanks to her reputation as “California’s most promising up-and-coming Ghost Buster,” Mel is soon dragooned into assisting the San Francisco PD with their investigation. Do the spirits who reside in the so-called Murder House have the answers that Mel and the SFPD are seeking? And while she’s at it, can Mel help the spirits find justice, as well?
 
I’ve loved Juliet Blackwell’sHaunted Home Renovation Mystery series right from the very start,and I’m pleased to report that Home for the Haunting is every bit as good as its predecessors. Blackwell’s latest is not only a complex and well-crafted mystery, but it’s a wonderfully creepy and poignant ghost story, as well. The spirits who haunt this tale are unique, their origin story compelling, and Blackwell does a marvelous job of making her readers understand that before the spirits were specters they were victims, and therefore deserve the according respect.

Home for the Haunting’s flesh-and-blood star is no slouch, either. Strong, smart, and formidable, yet still girly, insecure, and generous to a fault, Mel’s quickly become one of my all-time favorite traditional mystery heroines. I absolutely adore the fact that Blackwell’s found a way to connect Mel’s vocation to her avocation. Says Mel of her path in life: "For some time now, [I’ve] had the feeling that my unique talent might be to seek out and find homes filled with pain and strife, and maybe, by renovating them and communicating with their ghosts, bringing them back to life." Admirable, right? Screw the Ghostbusters – if there was somethin’ strange in my neighborhood, my very first call would be to Mel.

Add to all of that sharp, witty dialogue, a quickly paced plot, and just enough information about both San Francisco and Victorian architecture to make you feel like you’re learning something (but not enough to make you feel as though you’re sitting through a lecture), and you have in Juliet Blackwell’s Home for the Haunting a book that I think deserves a spot at the very top of every supernatural cozy fan’s Christmas list.