Title: Dead Serious Case #4 Professor Prometheus Plume
Author: Vawn Cassidy
Series: Crawshanks Guide to the Recently Departed #4
Pages: 287
After months of dealing with various ghostly crises and averting a near apocalypse, Danny and Tristian are in need of a vacation. Danny books a romantic New Years getaway in a quiet hotel in the wilds of north Yorkshire moors, but they quickly realize their getaway isn’t going to be as quiet as they expected. They end up snowed in during the first murder mystery weekend at what turns out to be a haunted hotel, and one of the actors ends up dead.
After the intense and almost world ending events of the last book, this one was a nice change of pace and brought back a bit more fun into the story. Danny and Tristan’s hotel is extremely haunted as it was a large mansion that a lot of people had died in and they never left. Those ghosts are now bored and cause chaos frequently for the guests and staff, which also causes a lot of people to quit. I enjoyed the wide variety of ghosts in this mansion and they were very entertaining. The mystery isn’t as detailed as I expected as there weren’t a lot of clues to follow, but it was still enjoyable to see Danny and Tristan try to figure out what happened.
While this is a murder mystery and a major plot point, the trip to the hotel doesn’t actually occur until about 40% into the book. We see a good portion of the beginning of this book focus on spending time with their found family on Christmas, spending time with Tristan’s father, who is sadly declining, and Danny finally returning to his estranged family. All of these interactions were wonderful because we are seeing how close Danny and Tristan have become, how close their found family has become, and we get a lot of personal time with Danny which I thought was nice. But, because of this, the pacing does feel a bit off since the mystery doesn’t kick in until so late in the story and it felt like it was slightly rushed.
Overall, I enjoyed this one and look forward to the next one, which seems like it will involve another intense situation. I do appreciate having a lighter story in between intense stories, especially since it gave us a chance to further develop Danny and Tristan’s relationship and see them starting to make plans for a future together.
TW: father with dementia; grief; homomisic family members and homomisic slurs used; murder; cheating (side characters)
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Previous books and reviews for the series:
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