A Game of Ghosts by John Connolly

 

Look, a novel written by someone who actually cares about the story! And the characters! It's not a great novel, by any means, there are some premises that choke my suspension of disbelief, here, that might not if this were a complete story instead of an episode (this is apparently part of a long-running series); I'd probably have an easier time if it were straight horror instead of trying to commingle that with a detective story--in the sense of trying to be a detective story, rather than that of using detective story tropes to frame a horror story, which works just fine. As it is, this feels like some of F. Paul Wilson's later Repairman Jack novels, where he's fighting supernatural forces almost all the time; the author got a little creepy in a detective thriller and it sold and he kept needing to use more creepy in his detective thrillers. This is--really--a nicely-written novel that just does some things that don't vibe right for me. Better than the last few, anyway.