The Dead Come to Stay

Schillace’s sweet if underheated sequel to The Framed Women of Ardemore House finds autistic amateur sleuth Josephine “Jo” Jones continuing to rebuild her life in North Yorkshire while tending to her family’s crumbling estate. After surviving a fire in the property’s main house and struggling to get her freelance editing career off the ground, Jo decides to rent out a room in her cottage. She’s happy to take a secretive young man named Ronan Foley as a tenant, but a short time later, he turns up dead. Reluctantly, Jo is pulled into another murder investigation, which means more awkwardness and romantic tension between her and dreamy DCI James MacAdams, even as his colleagues remain largely insensitive to Jo’s neurodivergence. As Jo and James question suspects, they unearth a seedy underworld involving refugees and valuable artifacts being smuggled in and out of England. The semi-gothic setting and Jo’s ongoing quest for answers about her hazy family history tend to be more involving than the rote mystery plot, but Schillace’s characters remain a pleasure to spend time with. This isn’t quite up to the standards of its predecessor, but it’s still a solid cozy. Agent: Jessica Papin, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Aug.)