Michael Barnes
A pleasing murder mystery debut has as a protagonist a 30-something true crime tragic Claire Hendricks who makes money as a freelance medium. One advantage Claire has is her best friend Sophie who rarely leaves her side. This is because she’s been haunting her ever since she was murdered at the age of 17. Claire is Invited to an old university friend’s country pile to provide entertainment performing a seance for the family matriarch's 80th birthday. Needless to say a death occurs, a mystery unfolds and what is hidden is revealed.
Claire and Sophie team up with the least unbearable members of the Wellington-Forge family – depressive ex-cop Basher and teenage reactionary Alex – Claire and Sophie determine to figure out not just whodunnit, but who they killed, why and when.
Also the cast of characters are filled with non-binary, sapphic, and gay, queerness that is not a driving part of the plot but just how people in the contemporary world are.
The details of Sophie's murder/death are only hinted in this novel and I imagine to be slowly provided over the next two novels in the series Displeasure Island, and The Grapples of Wrath.
A pleasing murder mystery debut has as a protagonist a 30-something true crime tragic Claire Hendricks who makes money as a freelance medium. One advantage Claire has is her best friend Sophie who rarely leaves her side. This is because she’s been haunting her ever since she was murdered at the age of 17. Claire is Invited to an old university friend’s country pile to provide entertainment performing a seance for the family matriarch's 80th birthday. Needless to say a death occurs, a mystery unfolds and what is hidden is revealed.
Claire and Sophie team up with the least unbearable members of the Wellington-Forge family – depressive ex-cop Basher and teenage reactionary Alex – Claire and Sophie determine to figure out not just whodunnit, but who they killed, why and when.
Also the cast of characters are filled with non-binary, sapphic, and gay, queerness that is not a driving part of the plot but just how people in the contemporary world are.
The details of Sophie's murder/death are only hinted in this novel and I imagine to be slowly provided over the next two novels in the series Displeasure Island, and The Grapples of Wrath.