Phantoms and Felonies
When a local theater troupe puts on a new play at the club, manager Avery Morgan is excited. This is just the sort of event that’s destined to bring in potential new members. Okay, millionaire banker Bob Hanover has more bucks than talent and has used his position to grab the lead role, but that seems like a small price to pay until Bob is found dead backstage.
Bob rubbed many people the wrong way, but would anyone want him dead? The short answer to that is: Who wouldn’t want him dead? His long-suffering wife had to put up with years of womanizing. The show’s playwright has been tricked out of his one great idea by Bob, who claimed it as his own work. And Bob bankrupted one of the town’s small businessmen. The choices are many, and the time to find the killer is running short.
Avery is working overtime to keep the club open and find the killer. Fortunately, she has help with the latter task. Clemmie Bow was once a singer in the speakeasy in the club’s basement. Now she’s a ghost who’s also a top-notch detective. Together Clemmie and Avery will find the killer—even if it kills one of them.
Series: A Haunted Mansion Mystery – Book #2
Author: Lucy Ness
Genre/Category: Cozy – Event Planner/Paranormal
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Page Count: 288
Rating: 
Event planner Avery is a lovely person. She works hard, and even when others try to derail her, she carries on and gets the job done. In Phantoms and Felonies, she has the help of a young flapper from the 1920s, Clemmie Bow, who was murdered at the club. In this paranormal mystery, readers get two puzzles to solve. First, who killed banker Bob Hanover during an event at the club, and who killed Clemmie Bow?
Suspects in Bob’s murder are vast. It could be anyone who attended the event that night, but it’s Avery’s aunt who the finger points at first. Just because she wasn’t supposed to be there, and she was found standing over the body. It’s no wonder Avery and Clemmie get straight to work. Being an event planner helps Avery have access to club members and guests who may have had it in for the victim. Using her gift for the paranormal to communicate with Clemmie and get the info she wouldn’t be able to otherwise goes a long way in helping solve this murder. Other suspects have genuine motives, Bob destroyed one person’s family business, a man’s writing career was sidetracked, and the man’s wife put up with his cheating far too long. This victim is not likable, and no one will miss him. The evidence isn’t set in stone. A weapon is found, but anyone could have gotten their hands on it. Other evidence is thin and could apply to almost any suspect.
With help from Clemmie and Avery’s paranormal-loving aunt and friends, she cracks the case but not before putting herself in harm’s way. No matter how good an event planner she is, Avery can’t plan what a killer put in a corner will do. Not all of the questions raised in Phantoms and Felonies get answered. We still don’t know who killed Clemmie, but we do get a better understanding of what happened to her. Will Avery and Oz continue their relationship? And most important, will Avery ever tell her aunt the truth about her psychic abilities? Hopefully, all of these questions will be answered in the next addition to the series. In the meantime, readers should grab a copy and enjoy getting to know these wonderful and interesting characters.
Some exciting cozies readers will enjoy are Allison Brook’s paranormal series “A Haunted Library Mystery” and Maria DiRico’s event planner series “A Catering Hall Mystery”.
About the Author:
Lucy Ness has multiple pseudonyms; some readers may be very familiar with such as Kylie Logan, Casey Daniels, and, soon, Mimi Granger. When she first started writing. she broke into publishing writing historical romances and, since then, has written contemporary romance, books for young adults, and one children’s book. But all the time she was writing in those other genres, what she was reading–what she really loved–were mysteries. Lucy loves the twists and turns of a mystery. She loves the secrets and the lies, the red herrings, and the surprise endings that seem to come out of nowhere–until you realize the author has been preparing the reader for it all along.
She learned to love a good whodunnit early thanks to her dad, a Cleveland Police detective who enjoyed Sherlock Holmes stories and spent many of his days off searching for stolen cars. Often on those trips, she was along for the ride, and to this day, she has her Dad to thank for her knowledge of some of the less savory parts of the city. Later, Lucy read her way through every mystery at the library. Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, and Elizabeth Peters are among her favorites.
Lucy has a degree in English, experience in journalism, and a love for old cemeteries, dusty archives, the paranormal, and digging into family roots. When she’s not in front of a computer, she enjoys life with her husband, David, and their dogs. Lucy is a shaggy beast of questionable heritage, and Eliot the Airedale is the model for Wally in the Jazz Ramsey books. Lucy enjoys cross-stitch, knitting, weaving, stomping through cemeteries, gardening, sitting on the porch, and watching the hummingbirds while she plans her next murder.
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