A New Lease on Death: A Mystery

“If there is any complaint about A New Lease on Death, it is that the story ends on a cliffhanger. Hopefully that indicates there may be a sequel.”

Cordelia Graves is a ghost with problems: The authorities say she killed herself but she has no recollection of doing so. She has a very much alive and perky 20-year-old now renting her apartment; and her next-door neighbor has just been murdered.

Cordy has also discovered that if you don’t believe in ghosts, you can’t be one, as the late Jake McIntyre learned when he realized he was a ghost, declared he didn’t believe in them and disappeared . . . forever.

Ruby Young has problems of her own: She’s just discovered her furnished apartment in a questionable section of Boston is haunted by the previous tenant, and the ghost in question wants her to help solve Jake’s murder.

“I took a good hard look around my room. Nothing was out of place. There were no unexplained shadows or strange movements out of the corner of my eye. But I knew down to the tattered soles of my favorite unicorn slippers that I wasn’t alone.”

It takes some effort on Cordelia’s part before Ruby agrees, mainly because the police aren’t rushing to solve the case, calling it a mugging gone wrong. In that part of town, violence is common, so no one rushes to answer the 9-1-1 calls from that area.

“Jake’s death was certainly disturbing. A man I knew, a neighbor, killed right outside my apartment building made me justifiably nervous. I wanted the killer caught before he hurt someone else—especially if that someone turned out to be me—and the police weren’t being very proactive.”

It doesn’t take long for Ruby to discover that Jake had plenty of friends, he lived on pizza, and he liked pretty girls. He also had many relatives, like Cousin Bobby, who is caught breaking into Jake’s apartment. His excuse? He’s looking for Jake’s watch that belonged to their great-grandfather, mysteriously disappearing from Jake’s wrist when he was killed.

Of his numerous girlfriends, one named Shannon is hiding in Jake’s apartment unbeknown to the landlord. Ruby also notices her black eye and numerous bruises and wondered if Jake made them. If so, why would Shannon want to stay there and why would she mourn Jake?

“How desperately did Shannon need a place to stay? I’ve heard people say they would kill for an apartment but certainly they couldn’t mean one in this neighborhood.”

With the help of a lonely ghost who used to be the clerk at a nearby pawn shop, Ruby and Cordelia recover Jake’s watch but that merely makes more questions. “If it was a random robbery, why was it that the only thing missing was a watch that may or may not have been worth much?”

When Cordelia convinces Ruby to go to Jake’s wake, held at his favorite pub, she discovers another current girlfriend, Patty, and that girlfriend’s brother, Markie, who readily admits he would’ve killed Jake if he discovered him cheating on his sister, but he didn’t kill him—of course.

Ruby’s questions stir up bad memories and more than a little anger. She soon finds herself thrown out of the wake. It has also aroused suspicion from the wrong party because someone has broken into her apartment, and “written BACK OFF! In two-foot-high letters across the glass.”

Things are going from bad to worse.

“Whoever killed Jake had Ruby on their radar now.”

If Ruby doesn’t solve the crime soon, Cordelia may have to talk her into dropping the case. Otherwise, there may soon be two ghosts haunting Apartment 4G!

Author Blacke has taken the ghost story and concentrated on the funnier side of the genre instead of the eerie. Told from both Cordelia and Ruby’s points of view, we get the problems a ghost faces, as well as that of the person haunted by said ghost. Cordelia’s ways of communicating with Ruby offers some amusing methods as she uses refrigerator magnets, writing in the condensation on windows, etc., but the funniest is when she discovers that someone in the mid-stages of drunkenness can both see and hear her and has to convince teetotaler and underage Ruby to get drunk so they can talk.

This clever take on hauntings, with tinges of that old classic Topper, and the newer television series Ghosts, puts both haunter and hauntee into some unique and entertaining situations. Of its many reviews, several have noted how this novel would easily convert into a TV series all its own and most readers will undoubtedly agree.

This novel is by turns funny and tingly scary, with a bit of gumshoe work thrown in. If there is any complaint about A New Lease on Death, it is that the story ends on a cliffhanger. Hopefully that indicates there may be a sequel.

Read A New Lease on Death with the expectation that Olivia Blacke is at this moment writing that sequel and will keep her readers in more adventures of the investigative team of Cordelia and Ruby for some time to come.