There are only seven volumes in Beth Dolgner's 'Eternal Rest Bed & Breakfast' series (along with a bonus novella that Goodreads lists as 7.5) and this is book five, so I'm closing in on the finish line. That means that she needs to be making progress with the series arc, about Emily's late husband Scott and why she can't reach his ghost, and she certainly is. It seems that the mysterious barrier surrounding the small town of Oak Hill, Georgia, is thinning and ghosts from outside are starting to bleed through. One even walks through Emily and Reed at one point.

In fact, while Scott remains frustratingly on the outside—resident ghost Kelly tells Emily that he's doing much better, all things considered, given that he's dead—hauntings are up within city limits because Oak Hill is teeming with ghosts now. There's a team of ghost hunters from Indiana staying at Eternal Rest for a week and they're in demand. Etta-Jane reports that her florists is haunted now, school principal Aaron Calloway says likewise and so does Britney at Oak Hill Sport & Leisure. Unfortunately, that list also includes Trish at Grainy Day Bakery and I'll explain why.

We start out with news that Trevor's dad is dead. You'll recall from book one that Trevor was one of Emily's myriad assistants at Eternal Rest and his father murdered Kelly and dumped her body at the cemetery next door. You'll also recall that he tried to kill Emily, but she attends his funeral anyway, just to support Trevor, who remains her friend. So does Mr. Thatcher's ghost, the town's old barber, even though he's been dead for ten years. Apparently cemeteries don't tend to be the haunted hotspots we might expect, but he's still hanging around. And while cemeteries are a good place to find bodies, they don't tend to be fresh corpses dumped in open graves.

And that's what happens to Thornton Daley, the town's restaurant critic. He's not a popular man because, over the years, he slammed what seems like every venue in town that serves food in the pages of the Oak Hill Monitor. Including Eternal Rest and Grainy Day Bakery. And now his ghost is haunting the latter, but the usual seance to find out whodunit sees him point the finger straight at Trish. Surely, as they say, there must be some mistake. But no, it seems that he was murdered and it was the peanuts in a batch of cookies from Grainy Day that triggered anaphylaxis.

Of course, given who Daley is and what he did for a living, Trish is far from the only suspect. Every member of the Oak Hill population who sells food in any way had plenty of motive and there are a lot of them. There's even a new barbecue place coming soon and, while it hasn't opened yet, that would surely be the next target on Daley's hatchet list, so their owners ought to be suspects too. Emily herself is no exception, especially as breakfasts at Eternal Rest tend to be served from the baked goods that Trish delivers, along with a meat and cheese plate.

So yes, Daley slammed her in a review too, even though the breakfast choice is hardly the biggest reason for anyone to choose to stay at a particular B&B. Frankly, I'm with him on this one. I've just spent a couple of weeks on the road in the UK and the worst breakfast I had was a limited one at a B&B in London: cereal, toast, croissants. That was my first breakfast on this trip but the final two, at a pub in Wales, were an excellent full-English and an outstanding combination of eggs benedict and eggs florentine. I'm all for cooked breakfasts, even in a heatwave, but I'd still stay at Eternal Rest for the friendly ambience. And the ghosts, of course!

Aside aside, Emily is a suspect too and circumstantial evidence continues to build to keep her high in the police's attention, along with her good friend and primary breakfast provider, Trish. Maybe they did him in together to make Oak Hill a more peaceful place. After all, murder does follow her about, this being the fifth murder she's been involved with in thus far in only a short span of time. When his body's discovered, her immediate thought is "Your life has been murder-free for a whole month". That's telling.

This is another solid entry in the series, but there's less to say about it. We've met the majority of these characters before and Dolgner continues to build them, but only Trish gets much attention in the supporting cast. Etta-Jane, Aaron and Britney are new names but they don't become much more than that because this is never about them. We do learn more about the local paper, but its editor Vic Oberfeld hardly endears himself to us by running an op ed that implicates Emily in the murder without any substantial evidence. Now we understand why he hired Daley. There isn't too much for the resident ghosts to do either, as we spend a lot more time at Grainy Day than Eternal Rest.

The broader series arc keeps moving forward too and it looks like it's going to take a giant leap in the sixth book, 'Groups Welcome'. I'm looking forward all the more to diving into that next month. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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