Dead Is Good is Jo Perry’s third novel and the latest installment in her series that follows the cynical Charlie and the loyal canine Rose in their attempts to solve crime and bring justice to those who deserve it on the mean streets of LA. In this story, the pair strive to unravel the mystery of a haunting, deliberately public suicide by cop. The only issue is both Charlie and Rose are dead themselves.

Charlie was the victim of a road rage incident three years ago, and in death he is as dissatisfied, irreverent, and sarcastic as he was in life. Rose is a sweet-tempered, ever-faithful dog whose miserable life ended in an extreme state of hunger and thirst and isolation. In death, she has found Charlie and is his sage companion in the void of the afterlife in which he is stuck. Together, they set about uncovering the events that led the young woman to kill herself in such a shocking way.

This supernatural detective procedural is suspenseful, poignant, and darkly funny. The mystery is straightforward, but the fascinating twist is that the protagonists cannot do anything with the information they uncover, locked as they are in a lonely realm where they can bear witness to the living world but not interact with it. While this might sound like it makes for a passive telling, I was engrossed in Charlie’s desperation to find out why his lost love—the sister of the woman who committed suicide by cop—is in danger. I was pulled along in Charlie’s and Rose’s pursuit of the tangled threads that led to the snarled heart of the seedy side of LA, the part of LA that is rife with drug rings, illegal sweatshops, and animal smuggling. And I glanced over at my own canine companion when reading of Rose’s patient, gentle lessons to Charlie and wondered what my dog may be trying to tell me at times.

The strength of Perry’s writing lies in her authentic characters, even as they are ghosts; in her prose that is in turns pointed, witty, and poetic; and in her deft handling of a nuanced setting. Perry’s Los Angeles is gilded and tarnished, rich and destitute, colourful and grim, artistic and desperate. The pithy chapters, each with a memorable epigraph, kept me turning the pages.

This is an immersive tale, and the mystery does not hide the fact that the story is a philosophical study of love and death, a pondering on the fact “that life is sweet and cruel. And that death—which brought [Rose and Charlie together]—is good.”

Highly recommended for fans of detective novels with a humorous, supernatural, philosophical twist.