The Medium Trouble Series

The Medium Trouble Series

Author: S.E. Harmon

Rating: B+

Vibe: Grumpy homicide detective, a medium who won't stop talking, and a peanut gallery of dead people who behave like horny teenagers

Hiro Moore owns a bookstore, sees dead people, and has the worst possible support system for someone solving murders: a sassy longtime ghost named Natalie who treats his dignity as a renewable resource, his recently murdered brother hanging around in non-corporeal form, and a rotating cast of newly dead strangers who would rather make crude jokes than be useful. When Hiro starts turning up at crime scenes claiming the victims told him things, he lands squarely in the crosshairs of Detective Maddox Booker—grumpy, skeptical, allergic to nonsense, and the obvious romantic endgame from the first scene. That's Ghost of Lies, book one, and across four books Alice Winters runs this engine hard: a serial-killer case, an enemies-adjacent slow thaw, and an ever-growing chorus of dead people heckling from the sidelines.

Here's what I loved, and what I think the series gets right that more "serious" paranormal mysteries miss: it commits to the bit. The mysteries themselves are genuinely creative—twisty enough to keep you guessing, with reveals I didn't always see coming—but Winters never lets the plot get self-important. The dead are not solemn oracles dispensing clues. They're nosy, horny, easily distracted, and frequently more interested in tormenting Hiro than helping him, and the comedy that comes out of a medium trying to conduct a murder investigation while a ghost narrates his every embarrassment is the whole appeal. Hiro narrates like a man who copes with trauma by never shutting up, and it works.

Does it stretch credibility? Constantly. The cases hinge on coincidences, Hiro repeatedly does things no sensible person would do, and the line between "the police would never allow this" and "who cares, keep reading" gets crossed early and often. But that's not the point, and pretending it is would be reviewing a different book. This is a series built for momentum and delight, not realism, and once you stop expecting a procedural and start treating it as a screwball comedy that happens to have corpses in it, it sings.

The Hiro-and-Maddox dynamic is the reliable heart of it. Maddox is the classic grump-with-a-soft-center, and Winters is smart enough to let his skepticism thaw at a believable pace even when nothing else in the book is remotely believable. There's real tenderness underneath the chaos—Hiro's grief over his brother gives the silliness something to push against, and the moments where the noise drops out and the two of them are just quietly choosing each other land better than they have any right to.

A fair warning, because taste here genuinely varies: the humor is broad and frequently crude, and the ghosts spend a lot of time acting like they're fourteen. Some readers bounce hard off that, and if you want your paranormal mystery atmospheric and dread-soaked, this is not your series. But if you can meet it on its own goofy terms, it's a blast.

The full series, in order:

1. Ghost of Lies (2021) — Hiro hunts his brother's killer, collides with Detective Maddox, and a year-and-a-half-cold serial case heats up. The setup, and a strong start.

2. Ghost of Truth (2022) — The relationship deepens and the cases get weirder; the ghost chorus is in full effect.

3. Ghost of Deceit (2022) — Seeing the dead gets more dangerous as the stakes around Hiro escalate.

4. Ghost of Retribution (2024) — Maddox takes point on keeping Hiro alive—a satisfying turn that lets the grump finally lead.

   
   

Read them in order; the romance and the ongoing threads build, and the later books assume you know the cast. If you want a paranormal mystery that's clever, fast, unserious in the best way, and willing to let a dead stripper derail a murder investigation, Medium Trouble is an easy weekend devour. B+.