MURDER, TAKE TWO

A semipsychic looks into a crime with potential historical ties in a Salem setting.

Identical twin cops Ray and Roger Temple reach out to their friend Lee Barrett for the crime-solving expertise her success in the past attests. Their nephew, Cody McGinnis, has been charged with murder, and the two are certain that he’s innocent. Cody’s name is familiar to Lee. He’s a local assistant professor who moonlights teaching at the Tabby, the Tabitha Trumbull Academy of the Arts, where Lee leads a few classes herself. The victim, Samuel Bond, was a beloved retired professor, and Cody had recently been turned down for a promotion, but that’s not enough to make a man a murderer, is it? Lee can call on not only her boyfriend, detective Pete Mondello, for help, but on her Aunt Ibby and Ibby’s friends, whose sleuthing plays like a mashup of Charlie’s Angels and The Golden Girls. Lee has two secret weapons in her quest: her semipsychic abilities, which warn her when she may be in danger but don’t tell her what to do about it, and her protective cat, O’Ryan, whose commentary would be more helpful if his Mmrrups came with translations. Lee’s investigation connects the crime to the 200-year-old murder of Capt. Joseph White Salem. In a town so rich in history, though, it’s never clear why she assumes that Bond’s would be a copycat of that particular crime, and the payoff is minimal anyway.

Sure, there’s a cat, some psychic powers, and the requisite detective beau, but not a whole lot more.