The Dead Guy Next Door

The Dead Guy Next Door
by Lucy Score
Recommended Ages: 16+

Explaining the genre of this novel could take a paragraph. But allowing for the use of nouns as modifiers, let's call it a hot romantic comedy paranormal mystery. Its leading romantic characters are a reluctant clairvoyant named Riley Thorn – from a long line of psychically gifted people who, unlike her, embrace their abilities – and an ex-cop turned private detective named Nick Santiago. She just wants to be normal, and settles for a stiflingly dull job in an abusive environment and a one-room apartment in a mansion full of elderly crackpots. He just wants to be a lad, allergic to rules and regulations and, above all, commitment. When she catches him snooping into the business of the gross guy across the hall, sparks instantly fly between them. Actually, she has a prophetic hallucination of the two of them having sex. Nick talks Riley into pretending he's her boyfriend, and later fiancé, so he can continue snooping – especially after her next-most-recent prophetic hallucination, depicting icky Dickie's murder, comes 100 percent true.

So, we've established the paranormal part – like Riley not being able to control the voices of the dead asking her to deliver messages for them – and the hot romance – because the smolder between these two characters will keep you turning pages way past your bedtime. And the mystery, too, because there are legit murders to be solved here, and all the detective story trappings from a client that makes Nick feel like a pimply brat to a police detective, his former partner, with whom he shares a bitter feud. And corruption that goes all the way to the top of the great city of (wait for it; I'll bet you'd never guess) Harrisburg, Pa. What! Where? I dunno, but apparently there's a state capitol in it. That much is apparent from the fact that the climax happens on the Capitol grounds. Well, the climax in one sense. But before I over-share about the other climax, I'd better get to where this paragraph was going when I started it, and that's to mention the comedy part, which runs through everything and is perhaps the best evidence that Lucy Score is a capable writer.

It's a relentlessly funny novel. The whole thing is a steady flow of wit, with never a dull page, whether the subject matter is sexy, spooky or related to crime and detection. The characters are a menagerie of goofballs, including an old lady with a fixation on men's butts; a paranormal life coach whose apparent, total perfection triggers Nick's jealousy and Riley's sense of the ridiculous; the outrageous wait staff of the seediest bar, probably, in the mid-Atlantic states; all the quirky people in the hero couple's personal and professional lives. Even the main characters' fights, even their low moods and setbacks, even the life-and-death chase with the killer(s) at the climax of the book, are laced with sarcasm and landmined with silliness. So, whether it's the woo-woo stuff, or the (insert wolf whistle) stuff, or the who-done-it that mostly interests you, the mortar that holds it all together and makes it completely entertaining is the comedic gift that makes this, in my books, a successful novel, and may draw me back into Lucy Score's world.

This is the first of (so far) four "Riley Thorn" novels, which also include The Corpse in the Closet, The Blast from the Past and, coming in July 2024, The Body in the Backyard; all of them a.k.a. "Riley Thorn and ..." Romance novelist Score is also the author of the "Benevolence" trilogy, two "Sinner and Saint" novels, eight "Blue Moon" novels, the "Knockemout" trilogy and about nine other novels, and co-author with Claire Kingsley of six "Bootleg Springs" novels.