13-year-old Gilda Joyce has been interested in surveillance ever since reading Harriet the Spy back in elementary school. One of her plans for her boring summer vacation is to continue spying on Plaid Pants, AKA Hector Flack, who works at the convenience store and whom Gilda thinks could be a serial killer. (He’s not.) Her favorite possession is the old Underwood manual typewriter her father gave her before he died of cancer two years ago. She likes to imagine that her father's spirit is inside the typewriter, encouraging her to write. She misses him a lot. After announcing to her eighth-grade English class that she will be going to San Francisco for the summer and writing a novel, Gilda must figure out a way to make that happen. A great believer in the power of psychic gifts to solve crimes, Gilda finagles an invitation to visit Mr. Lester Spinter, a distant uncle, to his run-down Victorian mansion. There she meets her reclusive and unfriendly cousin, Juliet, a morbid and doleful girl who claims to have seen the ghost of her dead Aunt Melanie, her father's younger sister, who jumped to her death from the house's tower ten years before. This funny and spooky novel delves into the psyches of both girls, but it's Gilda's quirky, frank, over-the-top personality that sparkles.

Read aloud the letter Gilda sends to Mr. Splinter, describing herself as "highly intelligent, self-sufficient, polite, neat, ambitious, energetic, lice-free, and, of course, quiet." (She most definitely is not quiet.) Readers will laugh out loud at Gilda's wild antics, crazy disguises, and her hunches, bolstered by her dog-eared copy of “The Master Psychic's Handbook”. The series continues with Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake and Gilda Joyce: The Ghost Sonata.


THEMES: CALIFORNIA. COUSINS. FAMILY PROBLEMS. FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS. GHOSTS. HUMOROUS FICTION. MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE STORIES. PSYCHIC ABILITY. SAN FRANCISCO. SUICIDE.