Barbara Burgess, Death on Grave Street

Death on Grave Street

Barbara Burgess

Five Star, Feb 2005, $25.95, 275 pp.

ISBN: 1594142696

Unable to work homicide ever since his pregnant spouse Cindy was murdered in a drive-by killing, fortyish widower Tyrone Trotman retires from the Detroit Police Department to accept the job of police chief of Port Ottawa. He makes an offer on a historical home with the famous Last Tree located in the yard. Tyrone meets the owner, Jane Blane, the love child of the town's recently deceased leading citizen; to his shock he wants her and she reciprocates. They even discuss marriage as love at first sight strikes both of them.

Meanwhile, Deputy police officer Billy Budd informs Tyrone he found a corpse in the cemetery that was not primed for burial; not long afterward, a second murdered body shows up in the same locale. While the townsfolk insist it is the spirit of the Last Tree calling out to all the trees cut down in the last century, Tyrone seeks a more mortal culprit.

This is an entertaining, paranormal, police procedural romance starring a wonderful protagonist who does not believe in the legends yet talks to the Last Tree and heeds otherworldly advice to save his beloved. The romantic subplot is fun as the lead duet know they belong together and don't waste time or energy otherwise. The townsfolk and the Detroit witch augment a fun, lighthearted, bewitching who-done-it that will have the audience wondering if the tree spirits or a Lorax-like human is speaking violently for the long gone forests by killing people.

Harriet Klausner