Nicholson, Scott: Speed Dating with the Dead

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In Scott Nicholson's Speed Dating with the Dead, Wayne "Digger" Wilson returns to the White House Inn in North Carolina, where he and his wife had honeymooned--and conceived their daughter Kendra--seventeen years earlier. Wayne promised his wife on her deathbed that he'd meet her spirit at the Inn, and he's finally keeping the promise, some years late and at the head of a paranormal investigative team. The White Horse Inn is just the place for a ghost hunt: it's dilapidated and creepy, managed by a fearsome and larcenous sadist. It's also haunted in a big way, not that Wayne goes into the hunt expecting to encounter any real ghosts. He's more a showman than a true believer.

If we're rooting for anyone to come out of the White Horse Inn alive it's Kendra, a sulky teen and budding artist who spills her emotions into a sketchbook. Wayne himself isn't particularly likable, nor do we wind up caring about any of his or the hotel's staff. Perhaps because we aren't really invested in the characters, the scary stuff they experience never quite thrills. The book is interesting because it brings readers inside a team investigating paranormal activity--not the usual cast of characters. But it didn't quite make sense to me that Wayne would spend so many years investigating phenomena he didn't believe in. And the motives of the Inn's resident evil entity weren't quite clear to me either. An okay read, then, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did The Skull Ring (read my review), by the same author.