DEATH AT THE DOOR

A young woman finds adventure with an unlikely companion in the second book in Blacke’s series.

Ruby Young feels lucky when her new Boston landlord offers her a deal: Sign a lease on a 4th-floor apartment in an old building with finicky plumbing and a nonworking elevator in a marginal neighborhood, and he’ll throw in the late tenant’s furniture for free. What Ruby—who’s starting her first full-time job in a new city—doesn’t know is that her tiny new digs also include the ghost of said tenant, Cordelia Graves, who allegedly died by suicide. Ruby and Cordelia form an unlikely bond, the older, more worldly Cordelia helping naïve Ruby adjust to the perils young women on their own are likely to face, especially in a male-heavy tech workplace like TrendCelerate. Ruby wonders why such a grounded, caring person as Cordelia, who has no memory of her death, would have taken her own life. Before she can look into Cordelia’s demise, however, another more urgent death intervenes. Martin Spencer, who delivers food from the local deli, is found dead of an overdose in TrendCelerate’s unisex bathroom, depriving the staff of sandwiches and many other less legal but equally valued treats. In overlapping first-person narratives, Ruby and Cordelia present their very different takes on Marty’s suspicious death and on how a friendship can flourish across the life/death divide. The solution to the crime, which depends on a clue that arrives late in the narrative, is less compelling than the quirky friendship Ruby and Cordelia somehow forge.

For readers who like their mystery with a solid dose of the otherworldly.