The Wraith's Return

The Wraith’s Return is the second book in a trilogy called The Martha’s Vineyard Murders by Raemi A. Ray. The story is a thriller, a murder mystery, and a love story. In the first novel, A Chain of Pearls, we are introduced to Kyra Gibson, a London lawyer who is visiting Martha’s Vineyard where her estranged father was living at the time of his death. 

At the conclusion of the first novel in which her father’s death was solved as a murder, rather than selling the house, Kyra took it off the market in order to give herself some time to reach a decision about what she wanted to do about that. In this second book, after several months back in London where she resumed work in her law firm, she chose to take a leave of absence and return to Martha’s Vineyard for an undefined period of time. She had grown to like her neighbors on the island, as well as most of the town’s people. Also, she wanted to find out if her budding relationship with Detective Collins might be worth pursuing.

 At the time of her arrival, there was a discovery of a 300-year-old pirate ship which was rumored to be full of a vast treasure. It had sunk in 1712 in one of the island’s harbors during a hurricane. But then there were some murders of two of the people who was interested in learning about the scavenger operation. Very quickly Kyra got involved with the mystery of those deaths, and on vacation from his own work, Detective Collins returned to the island to see for himself if a relationship with Kyra was possible.

 I’ve not written much about the characters that Ms. Ray used to fill out the story, but I found them all to be compelling and helpful in the telling of this story. I thought the ending sequence was particularly intense and one I certainly could not put down. Now, I have to wait for the publication of book 3, Widow’s Walk, which I expect to be available in a couple months. I liked this book very much.