Synopsis From Back Cover:
On her last day as a Detective, Midge McGowan is given the retirement present from hell: a ticket to a haunted house tour. She’ll have to spend the weekend before Christmas ghost-hunting in an isolated mansion with a group of misfits, including a know-it-all paranormal investigator and a has-been pop star.
The guests soon realize that the house has a mind of its own... and that they might not be the only ones there. An eerie figure appears on the property, and then the unthinkable happens: someone is murdered in a room that's been locked from the inside.
When a blizzard cuts the group off from help, the house’s own dark secrets begin to surface, and Midge can’t shake the creeping sense that they are walking into a nightmare. Could a ghost really be responsible? Or is the culprit one of the guests, who have somehow, impossibly, endeared themselvesto Midge?
Because I’m still not entirely sure whether I liked this book or not, this may end up being a rather short—and possibly a little rambling—review. Reading
Murder Most Haunted was an odd experience.
The first half of the book was a slog. Honestly, if I hadn’t needed this one for a couple of reading challenges, I might not have pushed myself through it. Our lead detective is, at least initially, a deeply miserable character. She reads as someone so unhappy in every aspect of her life that it robs her of any personality beyond what is imposed upon her by others in her life. It’s the kind of unhappiness that becomes such a dominant part of who a person is that Midge starts off feeling less like a fully realized human being and more like an automaton moving through the motions of life.
She has quirks, but early on they come across as just further evidence of how damaged she is. The old adage “misery loves company” pretty much sums up my first impressions of the rest of the cast as well. I didn’t like a single one of them at the beginning, and I found myself quietly hoping that more than one body might turn up.
Gradually, though, something shifted. I’m not entirely sure if the book itself started to grow on me, if the characters became more fleshed out and likable, or if I simply acclimated to its tone. Whatever the reason, as I kept reading, Midge began to make more sense. Her quirks and worldview gained context, and I stopped seeing her as a caricature and started seeing her as a woman who’d been dealt a truly shitty hand in life and did the best she could with what she had at the time.
I’m still not sure I like her, but by the end I had more respect for her—especially once the murderer was revealed.
As for the mystery itself, it was… fine. I’m a sucker for a locked-room murder, and I think the author did a reasonably solid job constructing this one. I don’t see myself rereading this book, but I would be willing to pick up a second Midge installment—provided the podcaster and the pop star come along for the ride.
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