An ordinary Jersey guy tangles with ghosts and mobsters in Barney’s novella.

In the opening scene, Adam is feeling depressed and out of place at a barbecue celebrating his best friend Dave’s 21st birthday. Dave has a good job at a bank, but Adam feels stuck working for his critical, domineering father in the family hardware store and is still grieving his mother’s sudden death just two years earlier. He leaves the party early, making plans to meet Dave at a coffee shop the next day. But after his father strikes him during a fierce argument over Adam’s dreams of going to college, he storms out before driving around aimlessly. When he finally turns off the highway, he finds himself lost on a heavily wooded country road, where he’s accosted by men in dark suits who threaten, chase, and shoot at him. Speeding to get away from the menacing thugs, he crashes his car, stumbles wildly through the trees, and tries to hide out in a dilapidated Victorian farmhouse he finds in a clearing. The house turns out not to be abandoned, despite appearances; it’s home to Amy and Tim, a strange pair with old-fashioned clothes and mannerisms and a strong whiff of the supernatural about them. Meanwhile, Dave, Adam’s father, the mobsters, and the state police are all searching for Adam for their own reasons in chapters that shift perspective among their various points of view. Barney’s lead character is a memorable, effective protagonist—the feckless, impulsive Adam is relatable, and his voice deftly conveys immediacy. Most of the other characters are one-dimensional, including Dave, Adam’s father, Amy, and Tim. The mobsters—Carmine, Lenny, and Lefty—are pure stereotypes (“Shut up, you dumb ass! If Carmine hears you, he’ll whack you himself”), as are the cops; their voices in the chapters not told from Adam’s point of view aren’t well differentiated. The brief novella format doesn’t provide sufficient room to fully explore or explain how the different elements are connected, resulting in an intriguing mashup of thriller and ghost story that unfortunately lacks real suspense.

A lightweight adventure that awkwardly mixes supernatural and mafia tropes.