Young Adult Book Reviews

Genre:  Mystery

Age Level:  14 and up

# of pages: 225

This story is told from many different perspectives.  First, there is Murray who can speak to dead people when he sits on their graves.  As a social outcast, he thinks of these people as his friends.  One day, though, he hears an unfamiliar voice that appears to be lost.  He begins to wonder if she was murdered and if so, how he can help her without ending up in the psych ward.  Other characters include Deputy Gates who is trying to solve the case of a missing high school girl, Mr. Janochek, the caretaker of the cemetary, and his daughter, Pearl, and Robert Barry Compton who was recently released from a mental facility and is trying to get on with his life.  Robert feels that he may have seen something in the past that he should tell someone, but his meds make it hard for him to remember.

The idea of talking to the dead is not new, but this story puts a new spin on it as Murray must go to the grave in order to see and hear the people buried there.  He is not psychic, but has a way of reaching beyond to talk to these people.  The characters in this story and well developed in a short amount of time so that you know who they are, what their motives are, and why they act the way they do throughout the story.  The mystery takes longer to solve than it first appears and will keep readers guessing right up until the end.