DYING TO TELL

Oliver Tucker may be dead, but he’s still a heck of a homicide detective.

After his death, Tuck continues to hang around Winchester, Virginia, keeping an eye on the only two living people who can hear him: his wife, Angel, a professor of American history, and his former partner, Bear Braddock. When Angel walks in on a bank robber, she’s saved by handsome, debonair Franklin Thorne, a bank employee. Inside the bank annex is a hidden vault that contains the body of bank chairman William Mendelson, who had sent Angel an email asking for a meeting. Although Tuck has only two living helpers in clearing up the mystery of Mendelson’s death, he gets tips from the spirit world in the form of his grandfather, a former OSS agent. Tuck, who has the ability to get flashbacks from touching bodies and objects, is sent back to World War II Cairo, where his grandfather hunted German spies and where Mendelson and his friends helped themselves to valuable antiquities. Mendelson’s son has major gambling debts; head teller Karen Simms claims the chairman was moving large sums of money around; and a vengeful Egyptian woman arrives claiming to be looking for the stolen artifacts. Tuck has plenty of suspects with motives rooted deep in the past, but his most disturbing problem is dealing with Angel, who loves him deeply but needs to get on with her life.

The third outing for the Gumshoe Ghost is just as complicated as the last entry (Dying for the Past, 2015, etc.) and even slower-moving. But the dynamic between Tuck and Angel keeps up the interest.