Darynda Jones is the author of a popular series of paranormal mysteries starring Charley Davidson.  Charley is a private investigator with quite a few secrets.  Her father and uncle are police officers who know one of her secrets and often call her in on cases.  Charley can talk to the dead, a very useful skill when investigating murders.  What her family and friends don’t realize initially is that Charley is the Grim Reaper.  Anyone who does not cross over initially at death has to pass through Charley to proceed to the afterlife.

 

So Charley is surrounded by dead people that only she can hear; often they stay because of unresolved issues, sometimes they have a mission.  Not all of them want to talk, but usually when the victim of a crime, they are willing to tell their story and when they do cross over, Charley sees their entire life.

           

This situation may be helpful as a private investigator, but Charley gets very skilled at misdirection.  So regular people think she is talking on the phone when she is really conversing with a ghost.

           

But being the Grim Reaper brings with it a bunch of enemies including Satan who thinks that subverting her messes up all of heaven’s design.  His son, Reyes, has been planted on earth to help Satan achieve his goal, but Charley just knows the boy is innocent of the crimes that sent him to prison and works to free him.  Over several books, their attraction grows until they are married.

           

So in “Eleventh Grave in Moonlight” both Charley and Reyes are caught up in a case involving his foster parents who sold him to an abusive monster.  Reyes wants nothing to do with his foster brother who comes to Charley wanting to know the truth about his parents, but she can’t leave it alone.

           

So between hunting the person threat-texting her best friend’s daughter, trying to save her uncle from hell because he killed assassins sent to harm her, and digging into two decades of secrets from a cult founded by Reyes’ foster family, Charley also has to discover more of her powers as the Grim Reaper and more of Satan’s grand plot.

           

“Eleventh Grave in Moonlight” is packed full of humor from its very start where Charley overwhelms a psychiatrist with the truth about her abilities and her husband to its cliff-hanger ending.  Nothing ever goes quite right for Charley, but with her humor and her friends, she just barrels straight ahead.  This makes the entire series a fun read with great characters, situations, and non-stop humor.