Maxie Dara’s debut SCYTHE mystery wasn’t at all what I expected. A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer was better than I expected with more humor and a lot more love.

Kathy Valence is forty-two, mid-divorce, and six months pregnant with her ex’s baby. The only thing right in her life is her job as a Collections Agent for S.C.Y.T.H.E., Secure Collections, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essence. Kathy helps souls pass over to the next stage. If they don’t pass in forty-five days, they become ghosts, doomed to remain on earth. Kathy has been the perfect agent for the job, a nondescript woman of middle-age. She thinks she’s messed up everything else in her life.

But, when she is scheduled to collect Conner, a seventeen-year-old boy, he isn’t there. His body is, but his soul is missing. She tracks him down and finds a typical sarcastic teen. But, he’s angry. He’s insists someone from S.C.Y.T.H.E. murdered him, but he has no memory of what actually happened. If Kathy can’t help him, he only has forty-five days until Ghost.

It’s the first time Kathy has faced this situation. She’s desperate to help Conner move on, until she does a little digging and spends time with him. Once she’s convinced he really was killed, she’s determined to find the person at her work who took his life. She suspects her boss, Stu, who always seems odd, and when he insists she drop the case, she’s even more suspicious. But, Kathy needs help.

She’s willing to ask a former co-worker who retired. Jo is blind, but leads an active life, much more than Kathy does. But, Kathy isn’t as eager to ask Simon, her almost-ex. The two love each other, but Kathy’s job and her fear that she messes everything up has kept her from revealing herself to Simon. But, he’s willing to step up, and he accepts her story, despite his inability to see Conner.

The search for answers becomes dangerous. But, with her new found family, for the first time in her life, Kathy has people she loves. The strength of this story is in the characters – Kathy, Conner, Simon, and Jo, who band together to help a teenager, and each other.

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer has mystery, humor, and strong characters. It’s labeled as the first in a series. It will be interesting to see what happens with S.C.Y.T.H.E. in the future.

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer by Maxie Dara. Berkley, 2024. ISBN 9780593815793 (paperback), 352p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a galley through NetGalley to review for a journal.