SOMETHING WICKED – SPIRIT CLUB MYSTERIES BOOK ONE
Book by M. Lee Buompensiero
Reviewed by Pennell Paugh
July 25, 2025 (San Diego) -- San Diego author M. Lee Buompensiero has released her first novel in the Spirit Club Mystery series. Something Wicked features a reluctant heroine, Sophie Lawton, who not only sees and talks to ghosts, she also solves crimes with their help.
An aunt Sophie has never met dies and leaves Volare Investigations to her. A librarian by training, Sophie resists the calling to run her dead relative’s investigative services. However, Maude, her ghost secretary, hands her a case involving a kidnapping that very much resembles her birth mother’s unsolved case from years before.
With the help of Maude, and Maude’s deceased, disgraced police investigator, ex-husband, Sophie becomes convinced to join forces with the couple to solve a girl's disappearance. It's a race against time to save the girl before a serial killer makes the girl his next trophy victim. Sophie battles against the odds to find the missing girl before it's too late.
I like the idea that ghosts might be helpful to a detective and that they are unpredictable—often disappearing just when they are about to disclose valuable information. I highly recommend this book, even to people who are afraid of ghost stories.
Below is an excerpt from the novel:
“Thunder grumbled across the sky and reverberated through the marble corridors. It bounced off walls that stretched sixteen feet high in smooth, rich Carrera, symbolizing the solemnity and the finality of eternity for those in residence at the Blessed Repose Mausoleum and Cemetery.
“This was expensive real estate with names etched into marble, much like house addresses, establishing the final resting place of the departed. The newer crypts had paint added to the engraved lettering for ease of location; the older ones didn’t, evidence that those residents were fading into history and being forgotten, as if to signal that no one visited or cared anymore.
“Often, the deceased’s repository had photos installed on the crypt wall, a hospitable touch. The gesture was supposed to honor them, much like displaying their pictures in a home, on a mantle above the hearth. Sadly, a small photo medallion and the occasional vase with real or artificial flowers were the extent of the loving reminders.
“A mausoleum isn’t a warm, cozy place. Still, the corridors were never empty. There were the deceased hanging about, lingering. As always, when I saw them, I was respectful of them as they were of me. To explain, this is my other “dark gift.” I see the dead; always have.
“I used to think that everyone saw the dead. I certainly thought everyone could see my childhood friend Annie. I learned that they didn’t.
“For those open to the idea that there are things that cannot be easily explained in rational, flesh-and-blood terms, this dark gift may not be so baffling. Just because a tree falls in the forest and you didn’t hear it doesn’t mean it didn’t make a sound.
“As it is with forests and trees, I not only see the dead, but I communicate with them as well, and vice versa.
“There are many terms for communicating with the dead: necromancy, spiritualism, divination, to name a few. None of them fit my experience. I jokingly refer to this dark gift as “STD” for “seeing the dead.” Just my attempt at a little dark humor.
“So, my dark gifts are seeing colorful thought balloons and the dead. And, as it is with some physical attributes, neither of these gifts was a choice…”
M. Lee Buompensiero has published a mystery novel: Sumerland which was winner of the 2017 San Diego Book Awards, Best Published Mystery category. Writing under the pseudonym "Loren Zahn," she has published the Theo Hunter mystery series: Dirty Little Murders (2009/2017), Deadly Little Secrets (2015), and Fatal Little Lies (2018). Deadly Little Secrets was a finalist in the 2015 San Diego Book Awards unpublished manuscript division.