The hollow dead

Coates is back with the fourth installment in her Gravekeeper series (after The Twisted Dead, 2023). Keira, as the ghost-seeing caretaker of a graveyard, is consistently pulled into a local mystery as well as the ongoing investigation into her past that she still doesn't remember clearly. In the previous books, Keira and her friends uncovered the fact that Keira used to work for Artec, an organization that is using the energy of the dead for its own purposes. Keira, in the past, has avoided directly confronting the organization because it is dangerous, but now she is ready for answers. Finding these answers leads the team into an abandoned theme park, which lends a creepy layer to the book. Readers will enjoy this extension of the "big bad" story line started with the first book in the series (The Whispering Dead, 2021). Fans of the series will also enjoy getting to spend more time with the fun, quirky characters of Keira and her friends, Mason and Zoe, and even the florist's goth son, Harry.

Australian author Coates ups the ante yet again in the fourth installment of her Gravekeeper series. Since Keira Collis is the only one in the town of Blighty with second sight, she's the natural person for Victorian spirit Cora Wentworth to approach with a complaint when they meet in Pleasant Grove Cemetery: She's been buried under the wrong name. A little poking around reveals that Cora was married to Phillip Wentworth, a noted poet who wasn't much of a provider or helpmeet, and she'd prefer that her headstone carry her maiden name of Cora Yates instead. Pastor Adage, who's provided Keira with a home ever since she arrived in Blighty with memories extending back only as far as faceless people hunting her, says he'll replace headstones only if they've been damaged. But that's a small problem compared to the epic crimes associated with the shady conglomerate Artec. Aided by her new friends Zoe and Mason, Keira's eluded Artec in the past, but now the evil empire, which is seeking to take over Pleasant Grove as the latest move in its global scheme to harness the dead for data and energy, is competing unofficially with freelance sociopath Gavin Kelsey to see who can be the first to destroy Keira for good. Coates provides just enough information about earlier installments to give newbies the grounding they need, but her target audience is clearly fans who don't care how thinly imagined her characters are in light of their expected lifespans. No, the dead won't stay buried. Would you? Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.