Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: The Ghost Had an Early Check-Out
SERIES: The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks #2)
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
PUBLISHER: JustJoshin Publishing
LENGTH: 180 Pages
RELEASE DATE: December 18, 2018
BLURB:
To live and draw in L.A.
Now living in Los Angeles with former navy SEAL Nick Reno, artist Perry Foster comes to the rescue of elderly and eccentric Horace Daly, the legendary film star of such horror classics as Why Won’t You Die, My Darling?
Horace owns the famous, but now run-down, Hollywood hotel Angels Rest, rumored to be haunted. But as far as Perry can tell, the scariest thing about Angels Rest is the cast of crazy tenants–one of whom seems determined to bring down the final curtain on Horace–and anyone else who gets in the way.
REVIEW:
While it was a bit odd to be reading a Halloween-centric book during my Christmas holiday, I was glad to finally get my hands on this story so I wasn’t going to let that throw me off.
This story picks up about 10 months after the ending of The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks. Perry and Nick have packed up and moved from Vermont to sunny California. Perry, so he can go to art school, and Nick so he can get a job in a PI/bodyguard firm in LA. The whole mystery is set in motion when Perry, who is out drawing an old Gothic-looking hotel, hears someone being attacked and goes to help out. It turns out that the victim is an old man who was once famous for schlocky horror movies. He asks Perry to help him find out who has been attempting to kill him. Perry, who knows exactly what it feels like to not have anyone believe him (except Nick) about dastardly goings-on, agrees.
As far as the mystery in this goes…it was pretty good. Lanyon has shown to be very adapt at crafting stories that keep the reader guessing, but when looked at in hindsight make perfect sense. That was very much the case here. I would have liked maybe a bit more fleshing out of the person behind all the incidents, but on the whole I found them to work within the story.
The romance was a bit so-so, for me though. I don’t know if the chemistry was a bit off, or I just haven’t read the first book in so long that I was missing something that a reread would have made better. Either way, while I found both Nick and Perry to be decent characters, and the book did a good job of alternating povs so that we get both sides of the equation on them, as a couple they seemed a bit bland. Not bad, but not very memorable either.
I did really enjoy the rather odd cast of secondary characters in this story, though. They are a bit strange at times, and Horace–the man who owns the old hotel–can be extremely over the top, but they created a very interesting backdrop for the mystery to happen against.
On the whole…this wasn’t bad. Not top-tier Lanyon, but a pretty decent follow up to one of her lesser-known mystery novels. And after all this wait, I can’t say I was overly disappointed with what I got.
RATING: 
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