THE INDIGO GHOSTS

October 1604 see a ship come home from the Caribbean with a traumatized crew, a foreshadowing of more danger to come.

Gabriel Taverner, who once served as doctor on the Falco, is called upon by captain Ezekiel Colt to help his crew after a harrowing voyage home haunted by blue-tinted ghosts. Initially skeptical about the crew’s visions, the ship’s current doctor threw himself overboard as they approached England. When Taverner and the captain search the ship, they find a hidden compartment holding the mummified body of a tiny woman and signs that several people were hidden there during the voyage. Taverner gets his friend Theophilus Davey, a coroner, to remove the body so he can examine it, taking a small sample from a stained area of her robe. Ironically, that’s all that remains when the body is stolen. A competent herbalist friend warns the sample is powerful and dangerous. Taverner’s friend Jonathan Carew, the vicar of St. Luke’s, tries to help make sense of what they’ve seen. Taverner knows the stowaways must have been desperate to make the harrowing voyage, which could easily have resulted in their deaths. Looking for clues, he and his clever sister, Celia, pore over his diaries of his own trips to the Caribbean and his findings on ancient religious practices, but as a rational man, he finds it hard to imagine supernatural explanations for his bad dreams and his constant feeling of being watched.

A bone-chilling metaphysical mystery larded with historical detail.