I like the cover of Night Stalks the Gray House, but it's very misleading. The gray house is only one story -- if one doesn't count the attic -- and it's made of adobe. We have a young couple, a psychiatrist named Randy Curran, and his wife, Skye. They've moved (again), and are looking for an affordable house. Mr. Hawkins, a real estate agent, describes the house as 'less than twenty years old' on page eight and 'just twenty years old' on page nine. As anxious as he appears to be to sell the place, he admits that renters have never stayed long in it. Skye is suspicious about the low price the owners are asking for it, but her husband (whom I disliked almost from his introduction), is enthusiastic.

One of the neighbors and his father tell the Currans their new house is haunted. Mr. Hawkins had told them that the current house was built on the foundations of a previous house that had burned down, but not about the reputed ghost or ghosts (big surprise there). I was going to complain about Mr. Hawkins saying that for all he knew no one had died in a fire [there] on p. 37, but a close rereading of what Randy said that Mr. Hawkins had told him on p.11 and Mr. Hawkins' reply to Skye's question about the Bracket family on p.35, showed me that the real estate man could get away with that. Sneaky wording there, Mr. Hawkins!

By chapter four, we readers learn that there was a murder and a disappearance. Was it a vengeful ghost or one of the neighbors? Accepting invitations from their neighbors may have given the Currans valuable information about their house, but after the second unpleasant evening, I'm beginning to wonder if they have any neighbors worth knowing. Well, Robert Frake and his disabled wife, Leslie, seem nice.

The plot itself isn't that bad, although the real culprit was easy to guess long before the big revelation. The dialog is stilted, which is unfortunate. Perhaps I'd have been less tolerant of the book's defects if I'd read it in one sitting instead of three days. It was easy to put down.

The author really should have consulted a dictionary. She keeps using 'compliment' for 'complement' for example. She describes the meadow where the gray house is set as 'covered in flora and fauna,' leaving me wondering what kind of animals were so numerous that they appeared to carpet the land. If you care about proper American English and have a larger vocabulary than the author, this book will make you wince.

I did plenty of wincing at sentences that were missing words, had the wrong forms of words, such as saying that some person's hair 'shined' instead of 'shone' (What did it shine? Shoes?), and the wrong word altogether, such as 'expounded' when the speaker obviously meant 'exaggerated'. Where's an editor when one needs one? (On the other hand, I had just finished listening to Jane Eyre, so when Skye dreamed about the house being on fire and someone crying, 'Jane!, Jane!,' I smiled.)

If I'd paid more than fifty cents for a used copy, I'd probably have felt cheated. As it was, I was mildly entertained. ( )