Dead Is Beautiful - Jo Perry

. .

Résumé :

Dead Is Beautiful, finds Rose leading Charlie from the peace of the afterlife to the place he hates most on earth, Beverly Fucking Hills, where a mature, protected tree harboring a protected bird is being illegally cut down. The tree-assault leads Charlie and Rose to a murder and to the person Charlie loathes most in life and in death, the sibling he refers to only as his shit brother, who is in danger. Charlie fights-across the borders of life and death-for the man who never fought for him, and with the help of a fearless Scotsman, a beautiful witch, and a pissed-off owl, he must stop a cruel and exploitative scheme and protect his beloved Rose.

Splendid--the best book yet in one of today's best-written and most imaginative series. There's nothing like it. --Timothy Hallinan

The [fourth] and probably the best in this unique series about a dead man and his dog. I love her writing and I love the extraordinarily original setting of a detective ghost story. Amazingly clever and deeply satisfying. --Eric Idle

Profound, irreverent, and darkly funny. Dead Is Beautiful is an existential romp that is part noir, party mystery and party comedy. --Pen & Ink Reviews

If crime novels are Redemption stories... then these books sit squarely in the canon of great crime novels... in the lines of 'Dirk Gently' with a red setter and a corpulent dead guy who's not only, in his afterlife, learning more about himself, the people he loved and the world he once inhabited; but about what it means to be human, to be afraid, and when all's said and done, what it means to be truly alive.--Derek Farrell

What is so brilliant here is that, while this is a story narrated from the afterlife, this isn't really a story about the afterlife. It's a story about life. It's about the perspective that death affords us and, with the ultimate objectivity, the possibility for reconciliation. Unvarnished, scathing, and loving, at the same time, it works, as the title suggests, beautifully. Throw in emotional suspense, a tightrope of tension, and you get a heart attack of a read and a lullaby, all the same. Read the whole series. Highly recommended!--Steven Cooper