Eleanor Wilde is a con artist who gets people to believe that she can find ghosts and eliminate them, all the while masking as a ghost hunter. She uses cameras and other equipment to find out the truth, and then fakes a séance where she shows them everything is going to be fine. She does this because it's the only way she can afford her sister's health care. Sometimes she even makes enough for a vacation or two.

While her brother hates it, Ellie doesn't care, as long as the paychecks keep coming. But what comes one day is one Nicholas Hartford III who wants her help -- his mother thinks a ghost is haunting them, but he knows it's all a crock -- just like Ellie's business -- but still insists she help them, at her own price. Unable to resist, Ellie accepts the offer, and when she arrived in England, walks into the strangest family she's ever met. Still, she's made a commitment, and she's bound and determined to find out who's staging the haunting, and why...

At first this sounded to be an interesting book, but unfortunately it fell flat almost immediately. I did not like the main character at all. As I stated above, she's a con artist, and doesn't even have a home of her own, preferring to leech onto the people she's working for so she can sleep in a bed. Just lovely. How endearing a person she must be to not only take money under false pretenses (even if she does admit it to some people) but to use them for room and board also. I would have had more respect for her if she had her own place. Ah, well.

At any rate, she goes to Nicholas's family home and meets his odd mother, who serves inedible food for a ridiculous reason since they do have money, after all; his clueless niece, and his extremely vain sister who refuses to realize that she's aging; and her sister's beau, who is loud and boisterous, but is the only person who shows selfless kindness to Ellie.

But in the end, it's the reason for the fake "ghost" that I found implausible. Also kind of gross, but I won't explain more of why I said that. The plot also devolved into a romance more than mystery, and the clues were leading in an entirely different direction all along. How unfair. But the ending gives us a clue to what the next book will be about, although I don't know if I will read it or not. The reason I gave it three stars is because this is a new series, and sometimes the author needs another book or two to hone their characters, so I didn't ding her for that. ( )

I received this book as an ARC.

This is the story of Madame Eleanor Wilde. Ellie, as she likes to be called, is a pretend medium. She pretends to commune with the dead. That is her means to an end. Her job. A well paid con artist. However she actually does help rid people of whatever is causing their particular haunting. So she actually performs her job. Just not in the capacity her employers believe.


Ellie is visiting her invalid sister. At her long term care facility. When she is approached by Nicholas Hartford III. He wants to hire Ellie to sleuth out who is behind the haunting at his family ancestral estate. Money talks. Curiosity wins.


This book is endearing. It was comical as well as mysterious. Very much a humorous Agatha Christie type novel. I loved the characters. Especially Cal and Rachel. Very entertaining. I can't wait to read future novels about Madame Eleanor Wilde. ( )