The latest case for one of Heaven's cleverest sleuths forces her to break a lot of rules.

Wiggins, her boss in Heaven's Department of Good Intentions, knows that Bailey Ruth Raeburn (Merry, Merry Ghost, 2009, etc.) means well. Even though she's often in trouble, he sends her back to her hometown of Adelaide, Okla., to protect Kay Clark, who's visiting The Castle, the magnificent home of the wealthy but troubled Hume family. Bailey Ruth arrives just in time to shove Kay out of the way of a huge pot that's apparently been pushed from a balcony. Ostensibly there to write a book on Jack Hume, the love of her life, Kay is really investigating his fatal fall down a staircase, which she suspects is murder. At first Kay believes Bailey Ruth is a figment of her imagination, but once convinced she exists, she grudgingly lets the new arrival pose as her assistant. This gig gives the fashion-obsessed ghost a chance to change from one outfit to another while investigating a long list of suspects that includes Jack's sister Evelyn; his sister-in-law Diane; clairvoyant Laverne Phillips and her husband; Diane's son Jimmy; Shannon Taylor, daughter of Margo, the Hume housekeeper; gallery owner Alison Gregory; and neighbors Gwen and Clint Dunham. At length Bailey Ruth realizes that Jack found something wrong when he returned home after years away. Now it's up to her to unearth the motive for his murder.

Delightful Bailey Ruth solves the tough case with panache.

In Agatha-winner Hart's charming third mystery featuring ghostly emissary Bailey Ruth Raeburn of heaven's "Department of Good Intentions" (after 2009's Merry, Merry Ghost), Bailey returns to earth to protect Kay Clark, a former Adelaide, Okla., acquaintance, from danger. After the fatal fall of Kay's old boyfriend, Jack Hume, at the Hume estate, the Castle, Kay pays her respects to his family at the Castle, where an enormous vase nearly flattens her. In delightful Topperesque fashion, Bailey appears to Kay in an ever-changing array of fashions as Kay's "assistant," Francie de Sales, and together they investigate Kay's brush with the vase. When they discover Jack may have been murdered, suspects range from Hume family members to two of Jack's former lovers. Often disregarding the "precepts for earthly visitation" (avoiding public notice, not consorting with other departed spirits, etc.), Bailey with her sunny Pollyanna attitude makes an irresistible cozy sleuth. (Oct.)