What a Ghoul Wants: 02/07/16

What a Ghoul Wants by Victoria Laurie is the 7th of the Ghost Hunter Mystery series. Now that the problem in New Mexico has been taken care of, MJ and crew are back in the UK to work on their television show. This time they're taken to a castle turned hotel that seems to have it out for its guests.

The castle in the book is Kidwella, in Northern Wales. There is a Kidwelly Castle in Kidwelly, Carmathenshire, Wales which bears a striking resemblance to the cover art. The fictional version is in better condition and it has a moat, whereas the real one is rather dilapidated and is near a river.

As a hotel, Kidwella is terrible. MJ and Gilly are given the wrong rooms and no one is manning the front desk in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, MJ thinks she sees a woman being hurt near her incorrect room and goes to call the police.

In the meantime, the night manager ends up murdered and the back of the hotel is put on lock down, partially for police activity and partially because it's haunted. In fact there are at least two ghosts with agendas, the Grim Widow, and her ghostly husband.

Unfortunately, the Kidwella Castle murders remind me more of Noel Coward's Murder by Death than say, Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House or even Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. With everyone being tossed into the moat, too, there was a bit of A Shot in the Dark. In that regard, it didn't terrify me as much as the demon creature from Ghoul Interrupted.

Four stars

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