Tomb with a View (Pepper Martin #6)

Written by: Casey Daniels
Pages: 304

Cemeteries come alive for amateur sleuth/reluctant medium Pepper Martin. 

Cleveland’s Garden View Cemetery is hosting a James A. Garfield commemoration. For tour guide and reluctant medium Pepper Martin this means that’s he’ll surely be hearing from the dead president himself. And when she’s assigned to help plan the event with know-it-all volunteer and Garfield fanatic Marjorie Klinker, she’ll wish Marjorie were dead…too bad someone beats Pepper to it

The sixth in the Pepper Martin series begins in the graveyard where she works.  The ghost-of-honour is none other than a member of the Ex-President’s Club, President Garfield. I like a little splash of American history tossed into a good book, and this holds that.  President Garfield did not serve as President for the shortest period of time, however he came awful darn close. As if all of that exclusivity was not enough? He also holds a club card for “Assassinated”.

So sure, Garfield’s ghost could make for some interesting reading.

Sadly, the first half of the book I found his ghost truly annoying. He blustered about his memorial ranting that he was a president and as so, he was “far too busy”. I don’t know how things run on The Other Side, however, he’s hardly the first president to go there. I got really annoyed with his “I’m off to a cabinet meeting” garbage as well.

That said, around halfway through the book, his ghostly story got a wee bit more interesting and by the end I felt glad I stuck it out. His mystery didn’t just carry over from his life, it actually kept going on the ghostly plane. What I REALLY liked was the twist in the mystery. You go along thinking it is mostly about this one subject that landed a pain in the rump volunteer falling to her death (pretty sad when you cheer for the murderer!). Then at the end you find out, oh wait, no it’s this whole other thing that’s only loosely related to what you thought it might turn out to be…

That’s pretty awesome.

In the end, while this started out as my least fave of the Pepper books, I loved it by the end. I can’t wait to read the next one!

–Lady O