by Sheila Turnage
Penguin, 2014. 352 pgs. Fiction
What a scream. And not just because there's a ghost. Mo LoBeau and her best friend Dale are back (after Turnage's Newbery Honor book Three Times Lucky) as the Desperado Detective Agency takes on its most difficult case yet. When the Old Tupelo Inn (decrepit and haunted) goes on the auction block, Miss Lana and Grandmother Miss Lacy go looking to buy an umbrella stand. What they get is the inn itself, for a cool $200,012.26 plus a Canadian dime, because Miss Lana "would not have that horrible woman for a neighbor." That horrible woman keeps after the property when the ladies may not have the money to fix it up, and she may get it because no buyers appear having heard the house is haunted. And it is. Mo and Dale spring into action to save the hotel and to salvage their history grades by tracking down the faintly pink and very chilly ghost for a school project. Haints and laughs abound as Mo and Dale--and a new friend--try to straighten things out for the living and for the dead. A total snortfest. Don't drink milk while reading.
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