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Spirit and Dust    by Rosemary Clement-Moore Amazon.com order for
Spirit and Dust
by Rosemary Clement-Moore
Order:  USA  Can
Delacorte, 2013 (2013)
Hardcover, e-Book
* * *   Reviewed by Hilary Williamson

Here's a lively adventure, Rosemary Clement-Moore's Spirit and Dust, starring feisty young heroine Daisy Goodnight who talks to the dead. After helping local police solve murders for some time this 'kick-ass teen psychic' now works with the FBI. Her handler, Agent Taylor (aka Agent Tasty), is 'really hot for a buttoned-up guy with a G-man haircut and a newly minted FBI badge.' He calls her Jailbait, but his partner, Agent Gerard, is not a fan.

As the story opens, Daisy, 'raised by a family of witches and psychics', is hauled out of freshman chemistry class and flown to the Midwest, where a young woman, Alexis Maguire, has been kidnapped, her driver murdered. The action escalates (and continues to do so) after Daisy herself is kidnapped by crime boss Devlin Maguire and put under a geas to find his daughter. She's accompanied by her hot young kidnapper, Carson (a 'morally ambivalent bad boy' who calls her Sunshine) and the occasional ghost. All they know is that the villains are after the Oosterhouse Jackal.

On the run from authorities, their quest takes them to the Oriental Institute in Chicago, where they encounter members of the Brotherhood of the Black Jackal, as well as Cleopatra's shade and the ghost of Daisy's famed Aunt Ivy. After Daisy is tricked into releasing a jackal headed god who's preparing to unleash 'the end of all things', it's up to her to save the day, despite being 'Trapped in a library by man-eating lions and a self-appointed demigod in the basement.' Of course she succeeds with just a little help from Sue the Tyrannosaur.

Spirit and Dust is tons of fun, with plenty of surprises along the way. I'm hoping for a sequel or three - I want to spend more time with Daisy, her two admirers and her ghostly encounters.

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