GHOST IN THE MOUNTAINS

In Creed’s novel, a married Chicago couple vows to figure out what a possibly homicidal ghost wants.

Twenty-five-year-old Joe Miller’s mother, with her dying words, makes him promise to go see her estranged sister. As Aunt Maggie is 500 miles away from Chicago in a small Tennessee town, investigative reporter Joe and his legal-secretary wife, Jill, decide to go there for a much-needed vacation. Soon, the couple learns about the town’s eerie history: Local rumor claims that the ghost of a woman who died three decades ago haunts the mountains along with the spirit of her cat. It seems fanciful, at first, but on the way to Maggie’s, the couple actually sees the ghostly cat; in addition, a living stranger helps the couple with a flat tire and dies horribly shortly thereafter. Was the stranger a victim of the cat owner’s “psychopathic spirit,” who may also have caused a fatal school bus accident years ago? Before long, that ghost attaches herself to Joe, following him wherever he goes; the couple stays in Tennessee to figure out the ghost’s identity as well as her purpose. When it turns out she’s a likely murder victim, Joe and Jill realize that they may be looking for a still-living killer. Creed rolls out some diverting ghost-story tropes, as when the couple seeks out a psychic for help and hears mysterious voices in a dark room. Still, the story offers several surprises along with the mysterious details surrounding the ghost’s death; the psychic has a secret of her own, for example, and bizarre nightmares plague Jill. The main characters are sympathetic and relatable, and they see their share of personal difficulties; for example, a doctor tells Jill, who believes she’s pregnant, that she’s unable to have children. This makes the story feel more rewarding when the characters dig deep to expose a supernatural being’s secrets. Sadly, a number of distracting grammatical errors (“It’s more than just a coincident”; “Marry Had a Little Lamb”) hamper the book’s enjoyability, and the alternation between the past and present tense is particularly distracting.

A worthwhile supernatural thriller despite occasional stumbles.