Five Stars, With Observations

Clare Baddeley closes kitchens for a living and has never once regretted it. Then her seventy-one-year-old mother announces a wedding at the one hotel in Cobbleigh Sands that Clare has never managed to shut down, to a man Clare's files say used to talk to the dead for money on the pier. A routine background check unearths a widow's pension, a husband nobody buried, and a peacock with opinions. Some things a clipboard cannot fix.