Meet Miriam Price. Forty-something doctor, unhappy wife, slightly unpleasant woman. Dead.
The police have ruled her death accidental but Miriam knows it was not because she was there. Also, she’s still there, stuck in Limbo and not allowed to move on to the afterlife until she either reaches her death date, or solves the mystery of her murder. Because there’s no way Miriam is going to hang around in orange dungarees for the next fifty years, she sets about to solving her murder. But it’s not easy figuring things out when you’re a lowest-level ghostly figure, so she needs outside help. The only person who can see and hear her, is her elderly neighbour Winnie. The problem with that is that the two can’t stand each other and that asking for help from the person she sent an envelope filled with glitter as recently as the day before her death, is not easy. The good news though, is that Winnie is an amateur sleuth and up for the adventure, if only to get rid of her annoying neighbour for good.
Throughout the story you learn more about the antics the women have been up to and it’s hilarious. Winnie and Miriam are nothing alike but driven by the same moral standards, which makes them the perfect odd couple detective team.
Like in a lot of ghost stories, Miriam gets to stalk her friends and family and glance behind the curtain of the people in her life, and of course, she learns that not all is what it seemed: her lover, her best friend, her brother, they all have a reason for their behaviour in relation to her, and despite her self-awareness this still catches her by surprise. That felt a bit too much of a cliché to me.
Everything else though, is really well done. Miriam is grouchy and sarcastic and her commentary is sharp as spikes. Her brother (“more woke than a shop full of alarm clocks”), Millennial medical students (“snowflakes” she refers to as No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3) and Diagnosis Murder especially, bring out the worst (and best) in her.
This book had me snorting and laughing out loud and Miriam and Winnie’s exchanges were the biggest contributors to this. The book is a breezy read, doesn’t get scary, and although I could predict the ending by the time I reached the second chapter, I enjoyed this book a lot.
This very fun read was exactly what I needed after the slightly more angsty books I’ve been reading of late; it was the perfect palate cleanser.
Bookworm in the City 