"Highly recommended." A Dead Guy at the Summerhouse by @MarianAllen #YA #paranormal

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A Dead Guy at the Summerhouse

Written by Marian Allen

Genre(s): YA, paranormal, suspense



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"It was 1968. Like a lot of seventeen-year-old males that summer, I was thinking about death. Not Bobby Kennedy's or Martin Luther King's. I was contemplating my own. I could feel my eighteenth birthday looming and I had to wonder if I'd spend my nineteenth in Vietnam, in Canada, in jail, or in the Great Hereafter. It was nearly the last mentioned, and not at the hands of the VC, either. I came this close to having my goozle slit right here at home in good old nothing-ever-happens Faelin, Indiana."

Mitch Franklin thinks he's got it made when the town's wealthiest eccentric hires him to look after her two lapdogs. Then he meets her family. Five years ago, the last guy she hired played head games the family and servants are still trying to recover from. He also wound up dead. Now, some people think Mitch might be just like him. Some people think Mitch might BE him, back from the grave. Will Mitch survive the anniversary of his predecessor's death, or will he be another DEAD GUY AT THE SUMMERHOUSE?

An excerpt from

A Dead Guy at the Summerhouse

It was 1968. Like a lot of seventeen-year-old males that summer, I was thinking about death. Not Bobby Kennedy’s or Martin Luther King’s. I was contemplating my own. I could feel my eighteenth birthday looming and I had to wonder if I’d spend my nineteenth in Vietnam, in Canada, in jail, or in the Great Hereafter. It was nearly the last mentioned, and not at the hands of the VC, either. I came this close to having my goozle slit right here at home in good old nothing-ever-happens Faelin, Indiana. But that was later.

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I tried for a basket and missed, trotted half-heartedly after the ball, and caught it as it rolled to a stop against the fence. One good thing about playing alone on a day so hot the asphalt sucks at your sneakers: no razzing when you play like a stoned sloth.

The court ran along one side of the house, or Home or, as the Townies called it, The Orphanage. The official name was Faelin Municipal Children’s Refuge, making me, I guess, a refugee.

The parking lot ran along the opposite side, which is why I didn’t see the car that pulled in and parked. I wouldn’t have supposed it had anything to do with me, even if I’d seen it; I’d long since given up any hope of adoption. As soon as I turned eighteen, I’d have to leave, anyway. Probably go into the Service. Probably try for the Navy. With my dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes, I always kind of thought I’d look sharp in a white uniform.

I thought about that my last day at the Refuge, bouncing the ball across the court, not really practicing anything, just fooling around.

“Hey, Mitch!” I saw Jimmy Gassman’s features pressed against the screen of our first-floor bedroom. Jimmy, my roommate, was ten, and a first-class pest. “Mrs. Brandt wants you to get cleaned up and go to her office. There’s a lady in there!”

My heart did one of those flops like they talk about in True Romance comics. (Sometimes you get real desperate for reading material.) Like I said, I’d be leaving in a few months, and I’d been at the Refuge all my life; nobody had ever even taken me home for a month’s free trial, but I’d never given up hope. Kids can be so dumb. I mean, the cops found me in a dumpster. With my coloring, there was some speculation that I might not be white. Nobody in small-town Middle America in those days was going to adopt a kid who might not even be white. Things were changing by 1968, but trust me to miss the benefit.

Anyway, I tossed the ball into the equipment shed and sprinted to the bathroom. No time for a shower. I slopped off the smell with a washcloth at the sink and darted into the bedroom for a change of clothes.

Jimmy still had his face smooshed against the screen, humming loudly. He said it tickled his lips.

“Cut it out,” I said, pulling on a clean tee and buttoning my good Madras shirt over it. “You’ll get lead poison or something. That screen’s dirty.”

“I washed it,” he lied.

I hesitated between my pegged jeans or my new bell-bottoms. I decided to go with the more conservative look, and squeezed my feet through the older jeans and into my loafers. Thank God, I thought, for Trinity Episcopal Sunday School’s Dorcas Class, who had chosen the Refuge as their “mission” for the year. They tended to concentrate on the younger kids, but one of the members was a male clothes horse, and he’d passed me some pretty cool threads.

“Better hurry, before she changes her mind,” Jimmy mumbled, without taking his mouth off the screen.

I shook some Barbasol onto my hair and combed it back. Mrs. Brandt was with-it enough to let me wear my hair as long as I wanted, even half-way down my ears, but she insisted I keep it neat. I could live with that.

I peered into the mirror. Did I need a shave? No, but maybe in a couple of days.

“Hope you like the taste of bug guts,” I said, on my way out of the room. “Notice, if you will, the fly swatter on the floor under the window.”

Here's what

Fans are saying

Every family has issues

Mitch hasn't got a lot of experience with family, so when he's swept up in his employer's family, he's not sure what to make of theirs. And he needs to figure things out, fast, before a case of mistaken identity turns him into the second dead guy at the summerhouse.

I love Marian Allen's books, and this one is no exception. I'd dock it a half star only because it's sometimes a little challenging to keep all the players straight without a scorecard.

But I imagine that's just how the main character, Mitch, feels half the time - going from the routine he's always known at the orphanage to the eccentricity of a wealthy household full of extended family members and a few household servants who are treated much like family.

I'd add that star back, though, for unexpected twists and turns, and a cast of characters you can't help but love (often in spite of themselves).

— Holly Jahangiri 

Mitch is employed to look after two small dogs when their elderly owner feels they are in danger. What could be simpler? And the old lady's imagining it anyway, surely?

The plot twists and turns in Marian Allen's latest work will keep you guessing to the end, once you, along with poor Mitch, have untangled the relationships between the various characters!

I read the whole book in one sitting, unable to put it down.
If you love a mystery you'll love this, as you take Mitch's journey through family complications alongside him. Who to trust? Should he stay or go?

Highly recommended.

— Amazon Customer

Author Bio

Marian Allen

For as long as I can remember, I've loved telling and soaking up stories. At the age of six, I was told somebody got paid for writing books and movies and television shows; I abandoned my previous ambition (beachcomber), and became a writer.

I've had stories in anthologies, on-line and print publications, including Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress anthologies 22 and 23, on coffee cans, and the wall of an Indian restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky.

Small town life agrees with me. I like the interconnectedness of everything and everybody. I try to remember, in my books and stories, that no one exists in isolation, but in a web of connections.

Most of my work is fantasy, science fiction and/or mystery, though I write anything else that suits the story and character.