GHOULS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN

Author: Kathleen Bacus ISBN: 0505526948 10/2006 CONTEMPORARY Publisher: DORCHESTER

WHAT DO YOU CALL A BLONDE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET? LAST YEAR’S HIDE -’N’-SEEK CHAMP It’s autumn in the Heartland, when football rules and Homecoming royalty reigns—and full moons don’t just mean a passing high school varsity bus. But this year, Tressa Jayne Turner isn’t enjoying the frivolity of the season. Our intrepid 23-year-old reporter is trying to recover from ten days at the State Fair. After being stalked by a psycho dunk-tank clown, all she wants is a slower pace, some candy corn and toffee apples—and a serious story she can sniff out on her own. She’s in luck! Eccentric and reclusive bestselling writer Elizabeth Courtney Howard is coming to little ol’ Grandville. So, what’s stopping Tressa from getting the dope—besides a blackmailing six-foot-two-inch high school homecoming queen candidate with all the charm of Frankenstein in taffeta, a rival reporter out to scoop the competition, and the sexy park ranger who’s kept Tressa’s knickers in a knot since the fourth grade? Only the fact that the skeletons to uncover are all in a closet in Haunted Holloway Hall—a house only Norman Bates could love. It looks like a mother of a story.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Calamity Jayne is back in this third installment of the trouble-prone Iowan's life. This time we're experiencing a ghostly Halloween through her eyes. We've still barely begun the romance with hunky ranger Rick Townsend, though their grandparents are actively involved in a cantankerous romance.

Jayne gets involved with local students when she is assigned an article of the local Homecoming Queen candidates. One of them is obsessed with a writer who is supposedly coming to town, and she talks Jayne into following the story. Jayne is convinced this could be a big story for her, but finds that cracking it isn't that easy. She even gets Rick's grandfather to help her, since he took the author to a prom long ago. The author has a watchdog however, and they can't get past to interview the woman. Jayne is also stymied by an irritating reporter at the other local newspaper, who enjoys making a fool out of her.

If you like humorous mysteries, this book is full of one-liners for you. It is a fun book, though it got a little too cutesy for me at times.

Don't worry if you haven't read the previous two books in the series. Those events feature most of the same cast of characters, and there are enough references to past events that you won't be confused.

Heather Hiestand