"M" is for Malice by Sue Grafton

This summer I promised myself that, once I caught up with this, I would not fall behind again and here I am five books behind. Then - having written up this one and the next one - someone (almost certainly someone with four furry feet) turned off my computer by stepping on the switch for the plug strip and my files were gone. I keep reminding myself never to leave stuff unsaved on my desktop, but I never seem to pay attention for long.

This Grafton had a twist that was completely new in this series. We had a ghost. A real ghost - just imagine Kinsey Milhone and a ghost. It added a touch of weirdness to a piece that was pretty standard otherwise. I don't think the ghost contributed significantly to the solution to the mystery, but it was significantly strange.

Kinsey's cousin, Tasha, an estate attorney, brings Kinsey into this one. An old man dies and one of his four sons is missing, in fact, has been missing for almost twenty years after being cast off, the designated black sheep. The existing will still names him as an heir in spite of claims by all and sundry that the old man had disenherited him, so he must be found. Obviously, he is dead and one of the remaining brothers did the deed. Well, not so much - Kinsey finds him almost immediately with little effort and returns him to the bosom of his family.

The black sheep has reformed and is devoting his life to good works, and Kinsey finds him a much nicer person than any of his siblings. Naturally, he is promptly murdered and Kinsey determines to bring the murderer to justice.