Eleventh Grave in Moonlight

Jones’s lively 11th novel featuring PI grim reaper Charley Davidson (after 2016’s The Curse of Tenth Grave) finds her highly enjoyable established cast of characters doing their usual things, including lots of argument-fueled, lightly supernatural sex between Charley and her husband, Son of Satan Reyes Farrow, and a few confused dead people using Charley to pass over to the other side. But at this point, strenuous efforts to ratchet up the stakes of Charley’s cosmic saga have diffused the series into an endless soap opera that plays out on the human and celestial stages, making this entry a less than memorable transition toward the next piece of the story. Paranormal PI lovers may be disappointed at the blandness of the main investigations: a chase down of the stereotyped religious zealots who were Reyes’s original adoptive parents and a red herring of a stalker plot for Charlie’s coworker’s daughter, Amber. Still, Uncle Bob fans will be glad to see him take some strong stands. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners. (Jan.)