SCAREDY CAT

An opponent of the occult meets an unanticipated end.

When Sarah Grayson takes North Harbor, Maine’s annual house tour, she stops in at Gladstone House, where the first bedroom features a fabulous maple spool bed. The second bedroom offers a beautifully restored navy blue cannonball four-poster. Oh, and a corpse, which turns out to belong to Mark Steele, co-host of Night Moves, a television show dedicated to debunking tales of otherworldly hauntings. Persistent Mr. Steele had come to North Harbor to persuade stubborn Annie Hastings to allow her historic home to be featured on his program. Sarah, owner of Second Chance resale shop, is far more interested in home furnishings than either corpses or the specters they may or may not leave behind. But when her friends at Charlotte’s Angels detective agency agree to accept Steele’s producer, Delia Watson, as a client, it’s only a matter of time before Sarah gets caught up in the investigation of the ghost hunter’s death. Unlike strictly amateur sleuths, the Angels are fairly systematic in pursuing Steele’s killer. They inspect the crime scene, interview suspects, and plumb public records to gather the background needed to crack the case. Ryan does offer a smattering of subplots, opportunities offered by her gossipy small-town Maine setting and her characters’ wide assortment of attachments, hobbies, and fancies. But undergirding a standard shopkeeper cozy with the guts of a police procedural provides a novel take on the village murder scene.

The ghosts don’t stand a chance against Ryan’s savvy sleuths.