Jack Shepard is back! Let’s face it. While the blurb says “Bookshop owner Penelope Thornton-McClure and her gumshoe ghost team up”, many of us who read Cleo Coyle’s Haunted Bookshop mysteries love Jack, the ghost of a private investigator killed in 1949 on the site of the bookshop in Quindicott, Rhode Island. This time, in The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait, Jack and Penny team up to solve a current case while Jack reveals the truth about a related case from 1947.

It all starts with a launch party for the book By Its Cover: A History of Modern Book and Magazine Illustration. Buy the Book, the bookstore owned by Penelope and her aunt, Sadie Thornton, is hosting the launch party and an art exhibit to go with it. When Penny and several friends go to pick up the art pieces for the exhibit, collector Walt Waverly tells them he wants to sell everything. That includes a spooky self-portrait of Harriet McClure, who had been a local resident, artist, and recluse. Penny’s mailman friend, Seymour, falls in love with that painting, and insists on buying it, despite Walt’s warning that it’s cursed. Although they all scoff at the comment about curses, Penny’s team has a flat tire on the way home, and, when they return to Waverly’s the next day, they find him dead.

When there’s a second death, after several disastrous events, including a threat to the Finch Inn, pictured in Harriet’s self-portrait, Jack offers to take Penny back to 1947 and his investigation of a cover artist suspected of killing his gorgeous model. As always, Jack’s stories from the past offer Penny clues as to the current case.

This series has long been one of my favorites involving a ghost stuck in the present who still has links to his past. Jack’s able to take Penny with him as she sleeps. Are they dreams? Are they real adventures? No matter how it occurs, Jack stands out as a hardboiled PI with a heart of gold, typical of the 1940s. The diners and nightclubs bring his time period to life. Penny has the appropriate wardrobe for these adventures, but always complains about the shoes she’s forced to wear to be accurately dressed.

Cleo Coyle is also the author of the long-running Coffeehouse Mystery series, but Jack Shepard remains my favorite character. He first appeared in The Ghost and Mrs. McClure in 2004, written under the name Alice Kimberly. The series ran for five years, then disappeared until 2018 when the books came back under the name Cleo Coyle. Now, three years later, Jack and Penny return in The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait. For those of us who love mysteries with a touch of the paranormal, Jack Shepard and the Haunted Bookshop mysteries are worth the wait.

Cleo Coyle’s website is https://www.coffeehousemystery.com/, but, Jack Shepard has his own Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/JackShepardGhost

The Ghost and the Haunted Portrait by Cleo Coyle. Berkley Prime Crime, 2021. ISBN 97804245251867 (paperback), 316p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I bought a copy of the book.