Description: "Things aren't exactly going well for 16-year-old Luke. It's not the work at his stepfather's funeral home that bothers him-Luke's been handling dead bodies since he was a kid. It's the arguments between his mother and stepfather, Sal, which peak shortly before Luke's mother is killed in a fiery car crash. Following her death, Sal's moods become frightening, and Luke begins noticing signs everywhere: a release of gas from a corpse that sounds like 'help her'; a dead woman's finger seemingly pointing at a supply closet; mysterious iPod behavior; maple syrup on pancakes spelling out his mother's name. Karlsson's clues are rather haphazard, and what the book gains in readability for reluctant readers, it loses in intelligibility. But the goings-on in the lonely funeral home are effectively eerie, and the details of cadaver restoration and embalming give the novel a believable (if kinda icky) edge. If your teens dig this, try the other books in the Night Fall series, all of which take place in the unlucky town of Bridgewater." --Booklist

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