A New Lease on Death

May 1, 2024

Blacke ("Record Shop Mysteries") launches a new series. Twenty-year-old Ruby Young moves to a new apartment in Boston and finds that she has a ghost for a roommate--Cordelia Graves, who died in the apartment a few months earlier. When a neighbor is killed, the two team up to solve the murder. With a 75K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2024
Ruby's new Boston apartment comes with all sorts of ""amenities"": used furniture, plants (that she's bound to kill), noisy neighbors, and the ghost of the previous tenant. Cordelia does not remember her own death, so she continues to "live" as if it never happened. When Ruby moves in, Cordelia tries everything to scare her away, but when Ruby's next-door neighbor, Jake, is found murdered in front of the building, Cordelia decides to stop terrorizing her new roommate and team up with her to try and solve the murder instead. This series starter from Blacke (Rhythm and Clues, 2024) offers a creative take on the typical cozy mystery, with an enjoyable amount of laughs sprinkled amongst all the paranormal world building. Ruby is immature yet relatable and quirky, while Cordelia is earnest and snarky. This pair of amateur detectives just works, and readers will root for them and the friendship they're building. The satisfying conclusion offers the promise of a sequel. Recommended for readers who enjoy their cozies with a paranormal twist.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2024
The fatal shooting of a Boston warehouse worker is investigated by an improbable pair of amateur sleuths. Like, really, really improbable. Even after he's died, Cordelia Graves can still chat with Jake Macintyre, the neighbor across the hall from her fourth-floor walk-up, for the simple reason that she's dead too, pronounced a death by suicide at 43 after she was found in her bathtub last Christmas full of painkillers and Jack Daniel's. Their halting conversation is abruptly terminated when Jake announces, "I don't believe in ghosts," and vanishes, never to return. Now that Jake's incapable of investigating his own murder, Cordelia takes it upon herself to look into it. Since she has limited ability to interact with the pre-dead, though, she needs an ally among the living. The natural candidate is Ruby Young, an unemployed 20-year-old who's moved into Cordelia's apartment and whose belief in ghosts is so much stronger than Jake's that she detects Cordelia's presence even before her roommate is prepared to reveal herself. Their initial communications are awkward, since, as Cordelia notes, "I couldn't touch a keyboard, and she couldn't read my handwriting," and the physical contact that allows them to talk to each other drains Cordelia of her energy. Soon enough, however, Cordelia has paved the way for Ruby to take over Cordelia's old job as the office manager at the software design firm TrendCelerate and start gathering evidence. The mystery is laughably slight, but the camaraderie between the two women is surprisingly strong, and every single joke about being dead or communicating with the dead lands with a pleasant ding. Here's hoping the two leads get a case worthy of their considerable talents next time.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.