Mary Roach’s last book, Stiff, was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of interesting (and disturbing) facts about what happens to bodies once they’re - so to speak - unoccupied.

Spook is a similar exploration, picking up where Stiff left off. Is there an afterlife? If so, can we communicate with the dead? What about reincarnation, near-death experiences, and other “spooky” experiences?

Along the way, Roach talks with various researchers into these questions. Some seem quite sane, others, well, not so much.

In the end, I think she kind of cops out. The book itself completely fails to build a believable scientific case for life-after-death, although there are some people with what seem like well-designed experiments who are still looking into the questions.

Still a very fun book (with lots of amusing bits to read aloud to friends and family), and appropriate for the season (the season being Hallowe’en, of course).