Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 374 pages, $26
Does Tuesday Mooney talk to ghosts? Who is Tuesday Mooney?
When she was sixteen years old, Tuesday Mooney’s best friend, Abby Hobbes, disappeared in their hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. As a thirty-three-year-old “prospect researcher” for Boston General Hospital, she is “single but not young. She was tall and broad, pale and dark-haired, and, yes, dressed all in black.” And what is a prospect researcher? “A prospect researcher is one part private detective, one part property assessor, one part gossip columnist, and one part witch,” to do background research on potential hospital money donors.
Tuesday has no close friends. The best-qualified to hold that honor is Poindexter “Dex” Howard, a former co-worker, and she only tolerates his friendly overtures. She informally tutors Dorry Bones, her fourteen-year-old next door neighbor, but is not involved in her life. Dorry lives with just her father, so she moons over her black-clad neighbor and her mysterious, silent nature. Although Tuesday has parents and a brother, she does not connect often with them. She has no significant other. She has her job and her present. Her memories are shoved into the wayback of her mind.
Fate throws "Archie" Arches in her path. Archie is a single, mega-rich young Boston man (and attractive, naturally). Tuesday meets (okay, meet cute alert) him at a fundraiser for the hospital. She is just getting to the quipping stage with him when an eccentric potential donor, Victor A. Pryce (“Pryce with a Y, so you see, it’s completely different,” for those of you who know who the actor/art appreciator Vincent Price was), drops dead on the banquet floor.
Pryce purportedly died of natural causes, and his death sets off an unusual contest. There are clues scattered around Boston. A treasure hunt, with no clear description of the prize. (Edgar Allan Poe memorabilia?) Teams form to take on Pryce’s challenge. Tuesday is in. Archie is in, not the least because he actually knows the Pryce family. Rumor has it that the Arches and the Pryces are upper-class Hatfields and McCoys. Dorry is in because — awww — young Ned Kennedy is in. Dex is in.
Dex. He’s an unusual guy. He is making big bucks as a financial guy, but that does not represent his soul. His soul is a Dex who “had dreamed, once, of painting his face, wearing someone else’s clothes, and belting show tunes on Broadway.” He is capable of carrying on a one-sided “conversation” with Tuesday. He is emotionally needy.
The last salient character to be introduced here is Edgar Arches. You can’t meet him in person because he, too, is missing. He is Archie Arches’ father, the cutthroat head of a mega-corporation. His wife has taken over stewardship in his absence. His son has taken over some of the major duties. His daughter is … cool, calm and collected. As Tuesday gets to know Archie a little better, she strongly believes he is hiding knowledge to do with both Vince Pryce and his family.
Almost everyone is haunted in some way: Dex by the ghost of what he might have been, Tuesday by what happened to Abby, Dorry by her desire to obtain Pryce’s green goggles which she believes will allow her to see her dead mother, and Archie by what happened to his father.
Pryce’s widow, the remaining members of the Arches family, Dex’s cavalcade of boyfriends, earnest Ned all have parts to play.
Kate Racculia’s novel is about the human need to belong, being true to oneself, and of being able to move forward. She writes about these subjects with a gentle pen (but that doesn’t mean no grisly stuff) and a tender approach to her main characters. She hovers like a ghost for a while about supernatural issues before being more transparent (pun, pun!) about them. I enjoyed this book. I liked her eccentric characters and their stories, and the initial plot with Pryce’s game. But towards the end, I sort of drifted off, waiting only for the resolution. Will Tuesday Mooney be back? I hope so.
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