In this installment, Sophie, Zack and Jackie are helping out another crime scene business by cleaning up meth labs. Seattle is steaming in a heat wave and when Sophie takes a break from cleaning a lab to go outside, she hears a baby crying. She finds a newborn baby stuffed inside the body of a goat, and encounters his dead ghost-mother, covered in blood. Did I say this book was grim? It gets worse.

Sophie becomes involved with bikers, witches, missing money, protecting her hugely pregnant sister and oh yes, a few more ghosts. For some reason, Sophie annoyed me in this book because she was so … prickly. I was never sure why all the attitude and was, quite frankly surprised that she had any friends at all AND that Zack still lusted after her. She verged on being a ….itch and I don’t mean witch.

We finally find out why Brian, Sophie’s brother, killed himself but I didn’t buy the explanation. Several times I think the timeline was off – one minute is was the dead of night, the next sunlight was streaming and the pavement was streaming. May just be me – I confess I read very fast.

I will certainly read the next book in the series, out in December of 2009 and HOPE it’s more like the first one, light and funny. I trust Sophie will be a nicer person now that she’s living with Zack.