Pepper Martin, cemetery tour guide and unexpected medium, is used to the ghosts of dead people approaching her to solve their murders. In fact, she's sort of developed a reputation in the spirit world as the Private Investigator of the Dead. She didn't ask for this Gift, but since she's got it, she feels she should use it to help out a ghost when she can. So she wasn't really shocked to see the ghost of a beautiful young girl approach her while using public transportation one morning.
The ghost is teenager Lucy Pasternak who was murdered on her way home from a Beatles' concert 45 years ago. She knows she was murdered but she doesn't know by whom and she wants Pepper to find her body and let everyone know what happened to her all those years ago. You see, people thought she had simply vanished, never to be heard from again. Instead, Lucy has been trapped riding the same rapid that she was on the night she died; the night that should have been one of the most exciting in her young life. On that night, at the concert, Lucy had rushed the stage and kissed Paul McCartney. It was the last happy memory that Lucy would take to her grave.
Pepper has some issues of her own to deal with, including trying to get over the breakup with Quinn, a handsome cop that she still thinks about all the time. She figures that working on finding Lucy's body and figuring out who killed her will keep the demons at bay. On top of that, her friend and boss, Ella, has asked for help with her 15-year-old daughter, Ariel. This is more than enough to keep her mind occupied and off of the dashing Quinn.
As it turns out, Lucy and Ella had been friends and Ella was the last person to see Lucy before she vanished. So Ella really pressures Pepper to help with this. Of course, no one knows of the special Gift that Pepper has so she has to use her creativity and ingenuity to conduct her investigation. In addition to everything else, Ariel suddenly decides that Pepper is her role model and starts helping in the investigation.
Yes, Pepper has a lot to contend with while trying to locate Lucy's body and solve the mystery of her of murder. Then dead bodies start turning up. Will Pepper be able to solve this mystery without turning into a ghost herself? The surprise ending is one you won't see coming!
This was absolutely one of the most delightful books I've read in a while! It has humor, mystery, the supernatural, and a touch of romance. It's the latest in the Pepper Martin Mystery series and I'll now be reading the rest of them. For people that enjoy an involving, PG rated sort of mystery, Casey Daniels provides the perfect story. Don't miss this one!
August 14, 1966
Hereβs the thing people donβt get about Lucy Pasternak, I mean people who never met her: Lucy sparkled.
Back when the rest of us Baby Boomers where white bread ordinary, Lucy was one of the beautiful people. Inside and out. She wasnβt afraid to let it show, either. Lucy let her personality shine through, no matter what people said or thought about her. Like that time the kids in her sophomore class were picking on a newcomer simply because she was new, and Lucy stood up for the girl and welcomed her to her lunch table (which, because it was Lucyβs, was the lunch table).
Or the night we went to the Beatles concert at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and Lucy wore a miniskirt seven inches above her knees. Nobody was doing that then. I mean, nobody but the models in the fashion magazines. My mother practically choked when Lucy walked in to pick me up to go the concert. And me? I donβt think the word dork had been coined yet, but I didnβt need a word to explain how I felt standing next to tall, reed-thin Lucy in my turquoise and white plaid skirt, my blue blouse, my knee socks, and the matching cardigan my mother insisted I wear in case it got chilly. Oh yeah, I was a dork, all right, and I could only pray that by the time three years passed and I was seventeenβas old and mature as LucyβIβd be half as cool.
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