Peaches Dann is an amateur sleuth whose memory is unreliable. She uses a variety of mnemonics and other tricks to associate names with things and remember crucial things. Sometimes this is cute and sometimes it gets pretty old. Her adventures began with Who Killed What's-Her-Name?

In this fifth adventure, Peaches finds that her octogenarian dad has gotten married, and his new wife has been fixing up a very old house. The house has some mysterious history, which must be "dug up" so that its owner won't insist on selling it. Peaches and her husband Ted get involved along with a cast of rather faintly drawn characters form the present and the past.

I enjoy seeing senior citizens portrayed as capable of solving mysteries. Peaches's memory issues, while a normal characteristic for an older person, undercut this portrayal a bit. My complaint about this one, though, isn't about Peaches but the other characters; there just isn't that much to them. ( )