Dead Bolt
A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery, No 2
Juliet Blackwell

Obsidian
Dec 2011/ISBN: 978-0-451-23530-5
Mystery/Paranormal
Amazon

Reviewed by Laura Hinds

Mel Turner works as a general contractor in San Francisco. It was her father's business, and once he retired, Mel took charge. She had learned the tools of the trade growing up, and found that this type of work was her niche in life. Her other abilities were recently found. Mel is able to see and communicate with ghosts, and has had some success previously in dealing with them.

She's currently been hired to restore a historic Queen Ann Victorian house to its former glory. As Mel soon finds out, there are ghosts who inhabit this property and they are not happy about the construction work. Yet there is more going on than even meets the eye of a person who is sensitive to otherworldly beings, and it·s up to Mel to dig deeper and discover what is really going on. When the disagreeable owner of a shop next door to the job site is murdered, Mel realizes she has to step up and get some answers sooner than she'd thought. After all, once a killer has taken one life, they say it becomes easier to kill again.

Mel is not your stereotypical female sleuth or amateur crime solver. She is a woman working in a traditionally male trade, and is doing a fine job of it. Yet although she doesn·t want to admit it, she·s open to romance again after closing her heart to the idea following her divorce. When things go wrong at the Queen Ann Victorian job site, she knows it is her responsibility to get the job done and keep her workers and the family who lives there safe. The owner of the house has called in a green contractor, who just happens to be Graham Donovan, the man who makes Mel's heart beat a whole lot faster!

'Dead Bolt' is a fun read, with interesting characters, and solid plot lines. The home renovation tips scattered throughout the book had me looking around my own house with a new eye and some good ideas. The ghost antics are realistic enough to give readers goose bumps and the humor will make them laugh. All in all this is a most enjoyable book that will appeal to readers of Victoria Laurie, Joyce and Jim Lavene, Heather Blake and Mary Stanton.