K. E. O'Connor

To me, a book is always more enjoyable when the characters are interesting to read about. This was definitely the case with Ghostly Fright, which was a solid cozy mystery with great sleuthing and a lovely cast of characters.

Sometimes, I find that cozy mysteries really like to play up the immoral or bad sides of their suspects to show how suspicious they are. I really liked how no one in this book fit that bill. Everyone had positive and negative sides to them, even the suspects, which made the mystery and the interactions between the characters more suspenseful and realistic.

Everyone's motives for killing, or not killing the victim were all plausible, making the mystery difficult to solve - but in a good way! I liked the challenge.

The thing that kind of bugged me about this book was the involvement - or lack thereof - of the local police. Lorna, the protagonist, and her friend Helen, are kind of going it alone, with the local police not seeming to be that involved in this case at all. Helen is also able to get information out of her husband Gunnar, who is in a different police force, which I found a bit unrealistic. But that's par for the course with most cozy mysteries, and more of a pet peeve than a real issue with this book.

I read most cozy mysteries as standalones, flipping between through series to find books I'm interested in. This one does mostly work as a standalone. The reader isn't explicitly updated on Lorna's gift and on the broad aspects of her and Helen's lives, but you can quickly figure what's going on.

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