The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait: 07/25/22

The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait by Cleo Coyle and Traci Odom (Narrator) (2021) is the seventh book in the Haunted Bookshop mystery series. The bookshop is hosting an event on the art of the pulp novel. After selling a spectacular self portrait to Seymour the local collector of pulp art originals is murdered.

Volume seven felt like a mash up of two previous volumes: The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library (2006) and The Ghost and Bogus Bestseller (2018). It combines the elements of the collector with items valuable enough to cause trouble and a cold case that explains the significance of the modern day murder.

I've read this entire series as audiobooks. This volume does what I'd hoped for from the very beginning; it uses only one narrator: a woman as most of the POV is from Penelope Thornton-McClure.

But this volume also uses a new narrator, meaning all the characters have different sounding personalities. Sadie, for instance, has lost her strong Rhode Island accent. Jack isn't as gruff. That said, Traci Odom does a fine job reading and by the end of the book I was fully invested in both the mystery and in her interpretation of the characters.

The eighth book is The Ghost and the Stolen Tears. It's scheduled for release on October 4, 2022.

Five stars

Comments (0)