The Hostess With the Ghostess is the ninth (!) in the Haunted Guesthouse mystery series by E.J. Copperman, but it’s also an excellent starting point. Particularly since it’s moved to a new publisher (Crooked Lane Books) and is appearing in hardcover for the first time. A new reader can find out everything they need expressed through Copperman’s breezy narration as characters are introduced and events recapped, and a long-time reader will appreciate the reminders, since it has been a couple […]

The first in a new line of Mystery Bookshop mysteries by V.M. Burns, The Plot Is Murder is predictable but good-hearted, a welcome diversion for fans of cozy mysteries. I liked that, while our middle-aged heroine Sam is newly on her own and starting a new business, she wasn’t divorced from a cheating ne’er-do-well (as in so many of these books). She’s been widowed, and she’s opening a mystery bookstore as a way of honoring a dream she shared with […]

The Asperger’s Mystery series by E.J. Copperman and Jeff Cohen continues in fine form with its fourth volume (following The Question of the Felonious Friend). Samuel, a young man on the autism spectrum who runs an investigative business called “Questions Answered”, finds the case in The Question of the Absentee Father more personal than usual. His mother has hired him to find out where his father, long gone from his life, currently lives. The case takes him, and his assistant […]