cover image House of Ashes: A Haunted Bluffs Mystery

House of Ashes: A Haunted Bluffs Mystery

Loretta Marion. Crooked Lane, $26.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1-68331-843-9

Painter Cassie Mitchell, the 37-year-old narrator of this enjoyable if melodramatic paranormal mystery from Marion (The Fool’s Truth), is soon to be divorced, childless, alone, and on the precipice of homelessness. What money she earns from her portraits is not enough to save her beloved, “staggeringly” mortgaged ancestral home, Battersea Bluffs, outside Whale Rock, Mass., on Cape Cod. Into her world come enigmatic Vince and Ashley Jacobson, who offer to help around the house in exchange for room and board. She develops a bond with the couple and is shocked when, a few months later, her young tenants set off for a day out and fail to return. Angry at the local sheriff’s seeming indifference to their disappearance, Cassie calls the FBI, only to discover that “according to the U.S. government,” the Jacobsons don’t exist. The book benefits from a fine cast of well-rounded characters and some intriguing whiffs of ghostly presences. Though the subtitle suggests that this is a series launch, the neat ending doesn’t leave much room to develop Cassie’s story. Agent: Jill Grosjean, Jill Grosjean Literary. (Nov.)