Some spooky things are going on. The room numbers are all mixed up. The library on the mezzanine is filled with hundred of copies of the same book. And out on the street, the cars are all the same—vintage Studebakers. Back in the present, Wart and Cindy follow their motto—"Gather, identify, solve"—until they crack the case, with help from Wart's distinctly odd parents, and the loan of his mother's time-travel-proof cell phone.

For all the humour in Slade's gentle spoof of the detective genre ("A good detective always knows what time it is"), there is a serious ghost story here. Young Archie Tortle, drowned along with his parents in 1936, has not been able to accept his death. He has created his own world in the hotel, where everything serves his needs. Only Wart and Cindy can help him come to terms with his loss and stop him haunting the hotel.

Arthur Slade was raised in southwest Saskatchewan and began writing at an early age. He is the author of the Northern Frights series, the Canadian Chills series and Tribes and the recently released Megiddos' Shadow.