cover image The Solitaire Ghost

The Solitaire Ghost

Sylvia Kelso. Five Star, $25.95 (302p) ISBN 978-1-43282-532-4

Kelso (Source) makes a promising start to her Blackston Gold paranormal romantic suspense series, introducing several wonderfully rich characters. Dorian Wild is a smart, anxious Australian lawyer whose world is overturned when her boyfriend, Chris, a brilliant geologist who has created a mathematical model to make finding new mining sites far easier, is killed in a suspicious car accident. He leaves her the rights to the model and an unsent phone message documenting a hostile company takeover and extremely unethical corporate behavior. As she researches a strange connection with the Solitaire mine and Jimmy Keenighan, an 1880s newspaperman who wrote about the gold rush, Jimmy unintentionally travels through time to meet her and fall in love. Like much of the story, the romance between Dorian and Jimmy is just barely hinted at, leaving this feeling more like a prequel than a series launch. (July)