A skeptical podcaster is haunted by homicide

With a busy week on tap, I selected some light reading in “A Skeptic in Salem: An Episode of Murder” by Fiona Grace.

Mia Bold has fond memories of time spent with her dad, but he walked out of her life when she was about 5. Her mom remarried a wonderful man who loved Mia as much as he loved his own daughter, Brynn. The family was comfortable financially, but Mia worked hard to become a scientist and land a job with Center Pharmaceuticals.

The team she works with has just learned that the formula they created has strong potential to end diabetes. Mia is excited about future trials to prove it works. Maybe now her reluctant fiancé, Mark, will agree it is time to “take the next step.”

But in the span of 12 hours, Mia’s life goes into freefall. Her podcast debunking ghost sightings loses its only sponsor. Next, she learns that her brother-in-law has sold the building where Mia has been living rent-free, and she has two weeks to vacate. Then the CEO announces that the new drug also works as a diet pill, and all future research would focus on that. Livid, Mia sounds off. That drug was designed to help diabetics, and it hasn’t been fully tested. The outburst gets Mia fired.

That night, she reluctantly agrees to attend a fancy family dinner. She gets little sympathy there, and Mark manages to both humiliate and break up with her in front of the entire restaurant.

The next morning Mia receives a call from Graham Stone asking her to come to Salem, Massachusetts, and star in a new podcast exploring hauntings. The show is called “Bell, Book and Candle.” Since Mia is a skeptic, her job will be to try to expose fake hauntings in a city famous for the occult. Her co-host, Johnny Aster, is a believer and will try to prove the sightings are real.

Ready to start fresh, Mia takes the job and the free apartment above a Ghost Emporium. Her neighbor is sound tech Sylvie, and the two hit it off immediately.

The cast and crew meet at the Black Cat Inn for their first podcast. It is rumored to be haunted, so the owner Dutch Brown proceeded to show them proof. Johnny is a believer, but Mia is certain that this has been staged. Mia decides to return after closing time to investigate further. That’s when she finds Dutch Brown dead. He has been crushed by a falling chandelier.

Mia sees that it was rigged to fall but wants to know why and by whom, but everything she says or does just seems to point to her as the killer. As the sponsors drop out, her bosses’ odd behavior convinces Mia that she is being framed. She and Sylvie decide to get to the bottom of the case before she is arrested and can’t investigate.

Together they dig through city records, newspaper stories and interview longtime residents. Old resentments over loss of property and thefts of resident ghosts begin to point to someone angry enough to orchestrate Brown’s death. On a hunch, Mia and Sylvie contact their prime suspect, but he figures out what they are up to and attacks Mia with a boat pike. The blow would have been fatal if not for an amulet one of the shopkeepers had given Mia.

The police admit that Mia and Sylvie deserve the credit for solving the case. A week later Mia is famous, the podcast is “trending” and they have a long list of hauntings to investigate. The icing on the cake comes when Mia happily ends all contact with her former fiancé. Now she can say that she has good friends, feels free, at home and is happy and eager to see what the next chapter in her life will offer.