THE QUESTION OF THE DEAD MISTRESS

A client asks a researcher to find out whether her husband is cheating on her with his late college girlfriend, who might seem to be above suspicion but isn’t after all.

As proprietor of Questions Answered, a service dedicated to answering queries from the mundane to the esoteric, Samuel Hoenig (The Question of the Absentee Father, 2017, etc.) makes it clear to potential clients that his business doesn’t include getting the goods on cheating spouses. But Virginia Fontaine doesn’t exactly want the goods on her husband, Brett. Since Melanie Mason, the putative object of Brett’s affections, died three years ago, Ginny’s query has a more metaphysical edge: Can a person cheat on a living spouse with a deceased mistress? And there’s a further complication. Even though Samuel’s firmly persuaded that ghosts don’t exist, his assistant, Janet Washburn—a person he regards with esteem bordering on affection—wonders if maybe they do. Dealing with the vagaries of human relationships is hard enough for individuals like Samuel on the autism spectrum. Dealing with love and lust between humans and specters pushes his nascent understanding of the ways of the neurotypical to its limit.

Readers will delight in watching Copperman’s literal-minded hero grapple not only with unpredictable and nuanced human thinking, but with logic from beyond the grave.