The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait by Cleo Coyle

In the present, the portrait, which Seymour spends his life savings acquiring, causes lots of trouble, including another death. By closing her eyes and falling asleep, Pen accompanies Jack as he investigates the long-ago case, dispensing detecting tips along the way. One of the book cover paintings connects back to a case Jack worked in the forties, one that’s always haunted him. They check back in with the collector before leaving town and find him dead, an apparent accident-but there are very few accidents in a mystery novel. The trio heads home, but a flat tire means they have to spend the night on the road. The painting is described so evocatively that it appears almost luminous.

She was a recluse who spent much of her life painting portraits of herself. One, the collector offers to sell his entire first edition collection to the bookshop, and two, Seymour falls in love with one of the paintings, a pre-mortem self portrait of a woman who is now the town ghost.

When they arrive to crate and collect the art, two things happen. I was completely delighted to see Seymour the mailman featured in such a positive (and to me, absolutely realistic) light. Many of them were avid readers and I had more intellectual conversations with postal employees than with any other customers. Seymour is obsessed with pulp art and the three of them make the trip out to pick up the art work for the exhibit accompanying the book launch from a local collector.Īs a former bookseller in a university town, I can say some of my most brilliant customers were postal workers. Pen’s cohorts are Seymour, a local mailman, and Professor Brianert. This allows Coyle to mine the world of 1940s PI novels, as well as provide the reader with a satisfying contemporary cozy novel. Making it more delicious is the fact that Pen “coexists” with a ghost named Jack Shepard, who was a PI back in the forties. It’s the seventh in the series (the first five written as Alice Kimberly) featuring bookseller Penelope Thornton-McClure, or Pen for short.Īs the book opens, she and her aunt (and fellow bookseller) are planning a big launch party for a book on the art of pulp and early mass market paperback covers.

Cleo Coyle’s The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait is utterly charming.

The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait by Cleo Coyle