ometimes authors and readers just don’t couple up. Not sure why. But it happened here for me. My sister gave me Specters Anonymous for a birthday present during a complicated period of my life (with carpel tunnel surgery and a damn sling and all that). But I got the book and read it and it didn’t click for me.

So Ralph starts the book dead. He’s a ghost. And ghosts, like humans, have weaknesses. For them, sunlight and bright illumination is like alcohol to them. Some of them can sip and be satisfied. Others need help. So in the basement of a little church, the ghosts with issues meet for a Twelve Step program to overcome their problems with haunting and sunny-substance abuse.

And it’s an interesting premise. I would have liked to understand it further, what gets said at the meetings, who the other ghosts are, but that all seems ancillary. We’re told that Cal is a hard-ass driver in the meeting, that he’s scary and powerful and not-to-be-crossed. But that’s told, not shown. All the other ghosts get mentions but are given no proper introductions. As this is the first book of a twelve part series, I’d have liked the situation and circumstances to be more “fleshed out” (pun intended). Like I said, it was a very interesting concept that I wanted to know more of.

It’s a story with investigations and detective work and gum-shoeing and all that. And Fergus, the heavy, throws rocks (a tosser) and is appropriately threatening. But things just never quite materialize in the book. I’d say that if you like detective novels or tales with a different slant on life, you might try it. Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid.

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