Detective Sailor Doyle saves the world then is attacked by ghosts. Weird. Well, the story is different. The detective is badly injured in a previous incident, described in 15 Miles, is kicking an addiction to pain killers, is married, and, with all those handicaps, has to tackle murders plus angry ghosts.
This is a different story to what you think when you see detective
or what you expect when you read ghost
. Well written and entertaining. All the characters are interesting and most are different. As the cover says, nothing is as it seems.
I would put this novel on my must read list up there with Don Winslow's California Fire and Life.
First paragraphs:
There's a barber shop on the corner of Steiner Avenue and Cameron Drive, near a back gate where middle-school kids jaywalk in the few minutes before the morning bell. A rail-thin teacher, spooky-thin, with wiry arms and a polyester blouse, stands distracted at the gate, separating the street riff-raff from the adolescents. I peg her for a maths teacher, sixth grade. She's got least common denominator written all over her.
The barber shop has one of those candy cane poles outside, spinning for ever, bloody bandages hung out to dry. I know it's just an optical illusion, but it's a good one. The kid in the hooded sweatshirt passes beneath it before crossing Cameron. His clothes are threadbare, but he carries a hundred-dollar hockey bag. Who's playing hockey in Neptune, New Jersey, in September?
I wonder where they've built a rink.
He smokes a cigarette, the dumbass. He's maybe thirteen and I want to stop him, grab him by the throat and squeeze until he promises never to buy another pack. Then I'll steal his smokes. Why not?
Definitely a buy. And I will buy his next book.
