A MINISTER’S GHOST
by Phillip DePoy
A whodunit with a southern accent and a Jungian subtext.
When sweet young Georgia teens Tess and Rory and their orange VW are squashed by an oncoming train at the Pine City crossing, their grieving aunt Lucinda asks her dearest friend, folklorist/amateur sleuth Fever Devlin (The Witch’s Grave, 2004, etc.), to find out why they sat buckled up in the car and never moved. There were several eyewitnesses to the tragedy. Sheriff Skidmore Needle and his assistant Melissa were there, for reasons the whole town’s gossiping about, along with Orvid Newcomb, an albino dwarf who just might be the county drug lord. Moreover, the teens had movie dates just before the crash. Did Nickel Mathews and Tony Riddick hang around with their packets of ecstasy? Egged into a co-investigation with Orvid, who’s determined to avenge the girls’ deaths for the sake of his love, their former nanny, Fever wonders why the keys to the car were never recovered. Before sweet Tess and Rory can be laid to rest, Fever will have to rethink his friendship with Skid; deal with Orvid and another scourge by confronting his Jungian shadow self; and admit his love for Lucinda.
By far DePoy’s best, with top-notch plotting, full-blown characters (even that albino dwarf) and a bit of Shakespeare thrown in.