Riley Thorn and the Dead Guy Next Door

On the night of July 4, 34-year-old amateur detective and psychic Riley Thorn races through her hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with her elderly neighbors in tow. For years, Riley has wished for a normal life, but this isn’t what she expected when she broke away from her hippie parents, Roger and Blossom. As she speeds away from the perpetrator of the murder that she and private detective Nick Santiago have been investigating, they hear gunshots. She chastises herself for answering “the knock on her door two weeks ago” (4).

Eighteen days before the high-speed car chase, Riley gets ready to leave for Sullivan, Hartfield, Aster, Reynolds, and Tuffley (SHART), the marketing firm where she works. She rents a room from Lily Bogdanovich, an acquaintance of her mother’s, in a palatial home on Front Street, where she moved after her divorce. She shares a floor with a slovenly, middle-aged bachelor named Dickie Frick. On her way to work, she stops at Little Amps for coffee. She gets a message from the beyond about the barista’s health, and tells her to get her lymph nodes checked. Riley has had psychic powers since she was a child, but has tried to ignore them.