Details:
This review is based on the first three books of four currently published Ghost Dusters Mystery books (# 1 Remains of the Dead, #2 The Devil May Ride, and #3 Dead and Kicking).
Edition: Kindle
Price: $6.99 per book (on Amazon)
Reading Challenges: Women Authors, Where Are You Reading (Washington), Mystery/Crime Challenge
★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆
I wouldn’t say Wendy Robert’s Ghost Dusters Mystery series was bad, but it lacked the right proportions necessary to make it a good mystery.
I’m going to use a baking analogy (oh, come on, everyone love’s a good ol’ baking analogy): Say you are making a cake. You have cake mix, eggs, and oil – all the basic elements that will yield a perfectly acceptable cake. You can tweak the recipe, add things, or even turn it into cupcakes by using a different pan, but you have the fundamentals. But what happens if you add six eggs instead of two? Or only put a half-cup of oil instead of a full cup? Or if you mix everything perfectly but forget to turn the oven on? All the right elements are there, but it doesn’t produce a palatable result.
That’s how I felt this series. All the right ingredients were there, but something went askew in the recipe and, after giving it three chances, it didn’t result in a story that I particularly cared for.
I think the story started out with some great elements.
Roberts took a character (Sadie) with a – let’s not kid ourselves here – pretty stereotypical paranormal superpower (she sees dead people), but made her interesting by putting her in the unique profession of crime scene cleanup. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where the main character spends her time picking skull fragments out of drywall. That sounds morbid (and, don’t kid yourself, this book is not for weak stomachs), but Sadie isn’t a “weirdo” with a fetish for the macabre. Roberts presents her as a normal, humble, unsung hero – someone who turned to crime scene cleanup (after cleaning up her own brother’s suicide) to save grieving families from having to deal with the gruesome, tragic scene. And, in the process, she sometimes helps spirits pass over to the next realm.
I think the title Ghost Dusters Mystery is a little misleading, though. I mean, as the series title states, these are mystery books with ghosts, and it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Sadie will be sucked in to helping restless spirits who’ve been wronged (well, even more so wronged than the fact that they’re dead). But the proportion of Dusting-to-Mystery was a little lop-sided.
As much as I appreciated the unique profession Sadie held and, yes, it was the reason she was forced to play private investigator, there was entirely too much time spent “dusting” and not enough spent on investigating a mystery. For example: Sadie is introduced to mystery. Then, Sadie goes and cleans a couple more crime scenes and helps a few more ghosts over that really don’t have anything to do with anything. Then, there’s some drama in Sadie’s life and she talks a lot about her brother. Then, she cleans some more crime scenes. Then, drama. Then….in the final 10% of the book, she remembers there’s a mystery to solve.
In short, I felt like I was tailing Sadie through her relatively uneventful life just waiting for something interesting to happen.
Another major thing for me was the lapse in time between books. It seems there’s about a year between each book and it’s not like the characters were sitting in stasis not doing much in that time. Things happened. Important things. Things that Roberts casually eludes to but doesn’t explain until later on. Here’s the thing: When I read a mystery, I don’t the mystery to be figuring out WTF the author left out that happened between this book and the previous one. It just made me confused (I mean, I literally stopped reading THREE times in book two to make sure I didn’t skip a book – until I read some other reviewers mention the time lapses). Honestly, it just seemed kind of lazy – like being able to further the plot and the relationships without actually having to write about it. Which obviously made motives pretty confusing and brings me to my next point…
Sadie was just so sporadically immature. Here’s this woman in her 30s, a successful business owner, who’s been through so much and is, really, a kind person (with a bit of a rough exterior and obvious emotional baggage). So why does she do things like start drama with her sister when her sister gets engaged to a perfectly fine guy all because Sadie thinks he looks like their dead brother (and no one actually sees the resemblance)? And that’s just one of many examples.
There were so many character and plot contradictions, it was hard to keep them straight. (These are vague spoilers/previews into second and third books).
[spoiler title="View Spoiler" open="0" style="1"]Zach was this sweet guy in the first book, but apparently they slept together (the night after the first book ended) and he acted all cold to her so, now (in the second book), things are awkward. That just didn’t seem like where they were leading with Zach’s character. But that doesn’t compare to what happened in the third book where he’s basically reduced to a weak, untrustworthy addict. Why? He was such a good character.
Sadie doesn’t believe anyone else can have “special” abilities in the first book – as she makes clear to Maeva, the psychic. Then…wait for it…Maeva and Sadie are BFFs in the second book. I understand how she went through a lot and how they could become friends, but it’s weird to book up a book and they’ve become instant friends.
Sadie’s sister Dawn (although a minor character – or at least should’ve been a minor character) was so in love with her fiancé in the first book, but then cheats on him with her new boss and, by the second book, is about to pop out a baby. I’m not sure if Roberts was going for a “when it’s right, it’s right” theme with this, but it made Dawn seem like a complete ho and made me wonder why I just spent so much time reading about how Sadie didn’t like her fiancé because he looked like their deceased brother and now, oh, I guess it doesn’t really matter because he’s out of the picture. Just so unnecessary. [/spoiler]
I really could list a lot more, but I think that’s enough specifics to get the general idea.
I debated reading the fourth book in this series and giving it one final chance – and believe me when I say it’s hard for me to just quit a series, especially when I’m only one book away from the end. But I just didn’t see it getting any better. I didn’t know if I’d open it up to find that Sadie and Zach were now married with children and grandchildren and then be left wondering what the hell happened until I was halfway through the book. It was easier to cut my losses.
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