A ghostwriter's guide to murder A novel

A ghostwriter who makes her home on the Thames makes a discovery that brings her personal life uncomfortably close to her fiction. Though she's not crazy about her current assignment, writing the 43rd installment of the Simon Hill mysteries for Harlan Oak, who suffers from early-onset dementia, Maeve Gardner is thankful that she can work from her home aboard theWriter's Revenge, a boat moored in the Regent's Canal. Her good luck seems to be mounting when she discovers £50,000 hidden inside a dock tire her dog, Captain Jack, is chewing on. Not taking any chances, though, she decides to tell the police about the hidden money. But when DS Kevin Dixon and DC Ayesha Gray come to look for the money, it's gone; the only thing they find in the canal is the body of plumber Gavin Foster, who just happens to be Maeve's ex-lover. Clearly, Maeve realizes, Gav had stashed the cash there and was killed when he returned to retrieve it. But that's not at all clear to Dixon, who promptly arrests her for the murder, releases her when he's pressed by solicitor Julian Davis, the brother of Maeve's best friend, India Davis, and then arrests her again as the evidence mounts against her. Since her Wiccan neighbors in one adjoining slip will obviously prove no help, it's up to Ashley Warren, the IT expert on the other side, to rescue her, first from the authorities, then from the killer. It definitely helps that Gav, who'd taken a new lover, tattoo artist Vicky Shaw, was also in bed with a bunch of construction-connected crooks, and that Ash is an ex-cop whose dedication to the case is fueled by his secret love for Maeve. None of the promising original touches Mullet supplies go anywhere. The result is a sad lack of surprise. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.