Look, I need to rant for a second. There's a scene where Ellie - our protagonist, a professional ghost hunter who doesn't believe in ghosts - is poking around a creepy English castle and finds a dead body. And then the body disappears. And instead of, I don't know, calling the police like a normal human being, she just... keeps investigating on her own. I was standing at my kitchen counter at 7:45 AM, making pancakes for the kids after a twelve-hour shift, and I actually said out loud, "Girl, WHAT are you doing?" My youngest asked who I was talking to. I told him the stove.
But here's the thing - I kept listening. And that's the trick Tamara Berry pulls off with this book.
A Con Artist in a Castle Full of Weirdos
The setup is pure cozy mystery fun wrapped in a thriller's clothing. Ellie makes her living running fake séances to pay for her sick sister's care, which is the kind of morally gray premise I can get behind. She's not a saint. She's not pretending to be one. She's a woman doing questionable work for deeply human reasons, and Berry doesn't shy away from the ethical messiness of that. When the very rich, very skeptical Nicholas Hartford III hires her to debunk what's haunting his family estate, you think you know where this is going. Rich guy, quirky woman, English countryside, will-they-won't-they.
And yes, it goes there. But the banter between Ellie and Nicholas actually lands. He's not just a brooding love interest - he's genuinely annoyed by her, and she's genuinely trying to scam his family while also solving whatever's actually happening. The tension between "I'm here to do a job" and "wait, something real might be going on" keeps the mystery engine running even when the pacing lags.
Because it does lag. The first couple hours are slow. Berry spends a lot of time establishing the cast of eccentric houseguests and the castle's layout (IKEA furniture in a centuries-old English estate - that detail made me snort), and while the world-building pays off later, getting through the setup requires patience. I'll be honest, during my drive home from the hospital that first morning, I almost switched to a podcast. Glad I didn't.
Sarah Zimmerman Earns Her Keep
Zimmerman's narration is what kept me hooked through that slow burn. Her accent work is solid - she differentiates between the English characters and Ellie's American voice cleanly enough that I never got confused about who was speaking, even when I was half-delirious from a night of back-to-back traumas in the ER. She gives Ellie this dry, slightly self-aware delivery that matches the character's con-artist energy perfectly. When Ellie is internally roasting someone while smiling to their face, you can hear both layers.
The pacing of her read picks up right when the story needs it to - once the body shows up (and then un-shows up), Zimmerman shifts gears and the whole thing starts moving. She's not doing anything flashy, no wild vocal gymnastics, but she's consistent and she reads like she actually understands the humor. That matters in a book like this, where the comedy is built into the sentence structure and a flat delivery would kill it.
Not Quite a Thriller, Not Quite Cozy - Somewhere Fun in Between
Here's who this book is for: people who want a mystery that doesn't take itself too seriously but still has a real plot underneath the wit. It's lighter than my usual fare - I normally need my thrillers to have at least one scene that makes me check my rearview mirror - but Berry writes smart characters who notice things, and the mystery resolution actually makes sense. No deus ex machina. No "the killer was this person we met for thirty seconds in chapter two." The clues are there if you're paying attention. That same commitment to a fair, earned resolution is something I also appreciated in Some Choose Darkness, though Berry keeps things considerably lighter.
Who should skip it: if you need a fast start, this will frustrate you. If you want dark and gritty, this isn't your book. And if you're looking for medical accuracy to yell at your dashboard about - wrong genre, Maria. I had to remind myself of that.
At 8 hours and 49 minutes, it's a perfect length for a week of commutes or a couple of post-shift wind-downs. Not so long that you lose the thread between listens, not so short that it feels like you didn't get your money's worth.
Night Shift Prescription: Take With Light Expectations
This is comfort-food mystery. The kind of book that doesn't change your life but makes your Tuesday morning drive home a little more bearable. Berry won an Edgar for a reason - she knows how to construct a plot and people it with characters who feel like actual humans making actual bad decisions. I bumped it up to 1.25x after the slow opening and never looked back. Carlos asked why I was smiling making breakfast. I told him it was the pancakes. It was not the pancakes.
