Charlie's Bones is well put together. It's protagonist, Lizbet, is a small town waitress who married a poor man, who became a rich man, only to die leaving her a fortune. It's not all good though since her old friends are intimidated by her money and her new rich neighbors are put off by her small town ways so, being bored and lonely, she decides to put a swimming pool in the yard behind her mansion. Only when the installers begin digging the foundation they find the bones of a man who was murdered nearly three decades ago. To make things worse, now that his bones have been disturbed, the dead man's ghost, an ex-cop named Charlie, appears and talks Lizbet into investigating his murder. But once she's into the case Lizbet finds so many lies and double-crosses that she's not sure if anyone is who or what they seem; not even Charlie.

Charlie's Bones is a little on the light side, but even so it's a fairly good novel. The best thing is has going for it is the concept of crossing the ghost story genre with detective fiction to create a nice little hybrid. The writing is good, though the story itself is weak in the puzzle department since the mystery is solved more by Lizbet's research more then deduction. As for the characters, they were not very sympathetic for the most part; in fact, most of them were often pretty obnoxious and even Lizbet's poor little rich girl lament wears old fairly quickly. The most interesting, and pleasant characters, are Lizbet's parents hippie parents, Duke and Lady, there names; not their titles, who, having passed away, appear only in flashbacks. A real pity as they would have made wonderful supporting characters for any further books in this series.

I'd recommend Charlie's Bones. It's not great, but it has a good, uh, spirit.