In the Cotswalds of 1924, Arbuthnot “Arbie” Swift is the celebrity author of The Gentleman’s Guide to Ghost-Hunting. Which also makes him the ideal man for Miss Amy Phelps and her ancestor ghost problem. After one of his nightly vigils, Miss Amy Phelps is found locked in her bedroom, deceased. His friend and the vicar’s daughter, Val, insists that they must investigate the murder, but Arbie isn’t so sure. Soon it becomes clear that everyone has a motive, and when another tragedy occurs, Arbie realizes he must close both the ghost and murder cases before it’s too late.
I honestly did not like Val, the vicar’s daughter. I found her to be rude to Arbie and a bully. Most of what happens to Arbie is because of Val. However, I also thought Arbie was a bit of a whiner. I appreciated that he was kind of forced into the ghost hunting, and the murder investigation, but Arbie turned out to be one of the more intelligent characters in the novel.
The mystery starts right away as readers follow Arbie in “assisting” Amy Phelps with her ghost problem. Miss Phelps murder doesn’t occur until about 25% of the way in. The waiting for something to happen made the pacing of the book go slower than what might have been intended. I think if the blurb was written differently than readers would have a more anticipatory feeling as opposed to “when does this lady die?” feeling.
I do feel the same as many others. There seemed to be a lot of useless information, especially about Arbie’s Uncle and his hobbies. Maybe if there had been some things that could have been removed and a couple of others given a little more attention than the pacing and connectivity would have been better.
Overall, I rate this novel 3.5 out of 5 stars.
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