Second in the interesting Deadly Deadlines mystery series featuring obituary writer Winter Snow, GRAVE WORDS can be taken as a standalone. This story is set around Halloween time, in Ridgefield which is close to a lake, an hour from NYC. Winter used to work for the local paper until it got amalgamated with a bigger title. Now she works closely with a town funeral home, providing an obituary service to relatives. Any amateur sleuth can see that she’s in a good position to sniff out clues.

A few fires occurred which were probably arson, and a man known as Chester thought to be a homeless man, is found a victim in a smouldering apartment. Chester was quite well-liked, as he did odd jobs, and Winter’s friend Carla who manages the funeral home is grieved to think he may have died as a result of arson. Winter is asked to write an obituary, but nobody seems to know much about Chester, not even his last name.

Two people investigating the fires are Scoop, otherwise known as Kevin Blake, a digitally skilled young journalist who was retained in the newspaper merger, and the man Winter is dating, police officer Kip Michaels. Other than these people, it must be said that almost everyone we meet seems to be a senior person. There’s Winter’s uncle Richard, who kindly gave her his lakeside cottage and their elderly neighbour Horace. She gives a talk to active retirees about writing a living legacy document so that later on, relatives will find obituaries easier. This may sound morbid, but I guess we lose touch with people, or time erases memories of special achievements, especially those from pre-website days. Maybe the author Gerri Lewis thinks this age group is under-represented in crime fiction, or she feels this is her likely readership.

There are dogs. A Pyrenees puppy, which will grow very big, and a Shepherd, big already. The lovely lakeside is a perfect place to let them roam, but for occasional wildlife that is, and between the dogs and Scoop’s cats, people have reasons to go visit homes to feed pets.

I enjoyed the read, but some aspects didn’t quite gel, such as Winter telling everyone but the police about her sleuthing, and I don’t see a journalist, or his editor, who isn’t mentioned, publishing the detail in the fire story which gets Scoop into trouble. Vivid scenes are set in the funeral home, but nothing ghoulish, and everyone is professionally respectful of the deceased. GRAVE WORDS by Gerri Lewis has got me keen to read her first book, called The Last Word.