The Skeleton Haunts a House -- Leigh Perry (Toni L. P. Kelner)

Sid the sentient skeleton detective is back for another adventure.  I reviewed one of his earlier cases here.  Sid can see although he doesn't have eyes, hear although he doesn't have ears, and think although he doesn't have a brain.  He'd be insulted by that last comment, I'm sure, but there it is.  He can also disassemble himself in a trice and various bones can move on their own.  How does this work?  Leigh Perry wisely doesn't try to explain it.  It's just the way it is.

Sid lives in the attic of the Thackery family and is Dr. Georgia Thackery's best friend.  Georgia is an adjunct English prof, and she, her sister, Deborah, and their parents, along with Madison, Georgia's daughter, are the only ones who interact with Sid.  Georgia's parents didn't appear in the earlier book I reviewed, but they're back for this one, and just in the nick of time, too.

This is the season for haunted houses, and billboards have begun to appear on the highways around Houston advertising this year's attractions.  'Tis the season.  The Skeleton Haunts a House was the a natural for me to read now since there's a murder in a haunted house (McHades Hall) at the Halloween Howl at the college where Georgia teaches.  Georgia and Sid, dressed as Scooby Doo and Velma, are at McHades Hall when the murder occurs, and Deborah is in charge of things there.  She's normally not a fan of Georgia and Sid's amateur sleuthing, but this time she asks them to investigate.

There's a lot more than a murder investigation going on here, though.  Perry has a lot to say about family issues, the sad conditions that adjunct faculty suffer under, the lives of college students, relationships, and more.  It's all told with humor in the appropriate places and in lively prose.  Sid (he likes to think of himself as Sherlock Bones) and Georgia come through in the end, of course, and there's a lot of fun (and a bit of romance) to be had along the way.  Check it out.