The House on Widows Hill

British author Green’s humdrum ninth mystery featuring the disguised extraterrestrial known as Ishmael Jones finds Jones, who was transformed by alien technology into a simulacrum of a human after his spacecraft crashed in England in 1963, and Penny Belcourt, his love interest/investigative partner, still in Bath after the events of 2019’s Night Train to Murder. Their employer, the Organization, which specializes in “investigating weird cases and strange happenings, in return for guaranteed anonymity,” wants them while there to check out Harrow House, a supposedly haunted building “that no one dares turn their back on.” An unnamed higher-up in the Organization is interested in purchasing the house, and wants to know what he’d be getting into. Jones and Belcourt’s ghost-hunting coincides with efforts by a group of amateur investigators, one of whom ends up dead, giving the pair a murder to solve as well. A predicable plot builds to a disappointing solution to the murder. Paranormal mystery fans will be better served elsewhere. [em]Agent: Joshua Bilmes, JabBerwocky. (July) [/em]