Jacqueline Fullerton is an Ohio business woman and attorney who has returned to her first love: writing. Her debut novel, Piercing the Veil, is a delightful cozy set in the small, Midwestern university town of Brecksville.

Anne Marshal, the main character, takes law courses at night while paying her rent by being a court reporter, a position that used to be called a courtroom stenographer. She's engaged to an up-and-coming prosecutor and seems to be faring quite well, coping with her attorney father's death two years before and his dreams of sharing a law practice with her. Then, Anne starts smelling her deceased father's pipe smoke, hearing his voice, and finally seeing a full-blown apparition. That would be enough for anyone to handle, but she's soon thrown into a tizzy when her father's ghost enlists her help in proving that businessman Tim Sherman, who is in the middle of a nasty divorce, has been embezzling his company's money and hiding it from his wife in an offshore account. Her father's otherworldly meddling nearly gets her fired and clouds her future career as a lawyer. His urging stokes her own obsession about the Sherman divorce case and almost gets her arrested—twice—and nearly murdered.

Piercing the Veil is a fun read with a new concept, having an experienced attorney's ghost help the amateur sleuth with a case—even one she handles reluctantly. I wondered, though, how or why someone with Anne's growing legal knowledge would do some of the things she did in this novel. But, then, that's what fiction allows amateur detectives do.

This will not be the last readers will see of Anne Marshal and her ghost dad. Stay tuned.