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T.J.'S GHOST by Shirley Climo

T.J.'S GHOST

By

Pub Date: March 1st, 1989
Publisher: Crowell

Richly drawn atmosphere is the primary attraction of this otherwise bland mystery. T.J. is reluctantly spending two weeks with her great-aunt and uncle near the California coast while her patents enjoy a contest prize: two weeks in Hawaii. But then her boredom is interrupted by a foghorn that calls her name, emanating from a long-abandoned lighthouse. The sound leads her to a ghostly Australian boy who turns out to be a spirit from a long-ago shipwreck, a stowaway still searching for his mother's lost ring. T.J.'s efforts to help him lead to some suspenseful moments and an entertaining vacation after all. Though this is based on true events, the plot is routine, and the subsidiary characters only mildly interesting. Climo does evokes the misty eeriness of the Pacific coast, but her story never really involves the reader as either mystery or ghost story.