Fall arrives in the miserable seaside town of Gloomsbury, Massachusetts like a fresh corpse—cold, gray, devoid of life.

After vanquishing an undead Victorian monster with his best friend Jeni Myers over summer break, the last thing Thomas Creeper wants is another supernatural mystery to solve. There are caskets that need polishing at his family's funeral home, and all that new homeschooling work his mother keeps piling on. But Thomas has a big secret: he's a Fixer, a detective for the dead, and his powers are just beginning to sharpen.

When corpses start washing up on Gloomsbury's shores, dyed head to toe in strange purple ink, Thomas realizes he might be the only person alive who can stop the killer's reign of terror. And he won't be alone. After the most important person in his life bails on him, a new core of allies—both living and undead—arrive on the scene, showing Thomas Creeper that there is one force greater than terror: friendship.

Dive into the series Booklist hails as "marvelously macabre" and follow the clues along with Thomas as past and present, horror and humor collide on the page, brought to life from the wild and unsettling mind of J.R. Potter.