Ghosted, by Josh Lanyon

[Ulysses]

Ghosted
By Josh Lanyon
Published by the author, 2024
Five stars

What a pleasure to dive back into a new Josh Lanyon novel. Her gifts of story-telling and mood-setting are strong as ever. Both the title and the cover illustration of Lanyon’s “Ghosted” suggest that it is a supernatural story. In fact, it’s a murder mystery; and while there is much talk of ghosts, the real ghosts are memories—including a memory of a classic m/m jock/nerd romance gone wrong.

Moreover, in the absurdly named fictional town of Twinkleton, Oregon, the emotional ghosts of the past haunt the present, complicating the investigation of the murder by Police Chief Beau Langham. I’m not sure how Lanyon arrived at the town’s name, but I’d guess it’s a metaphor for the reasons FBI Special Agent Archie Crane left to seek an education and a career outside its borders. Twinkleton sounds cute and charming (and for someone like me, highly appealing). For a grieving teenaged Archie Crane it was apparently unreal and felt insignificant. He and Twinkleton’s police chief were boyfriends in highschool, and the murder victim is the man who raised Archie after the tragic loss of his parents.

That’s a lot of ghosts, even without a Ouija board.

Lanyon’s characters are, as always, fun to explore. The sharp contrast between quaint, cosy Twinkleton and the violence that engulfed Archie during an FBI investigation is part of the emotional tension. The cool efficiency of Chief Langham contrasts with the personal pain and turmoil of his private life. As we learn about all the players in the Twinkleton drama, we begin to comprehend the unresolved emotional trauma that has driven both Archie and Beau in the intervening years.

This book doesn’t seem to be the start of anything; but it could be. Like so many of Josh Lanyon’s books, this one left me wanting more, while also feeling nicely satisfied.