Synopsis
A Mystery Scene Magazine 2021 Editor’s Pick
Trust No One. Especially Your Neighbors.
Rachel Drake is on the run from the man who killed her husband. She never leaves her safe haven in an anonymous doorman building, until one night a phone call sends her running. On her way to the garage, she is murdered in the elevator. But her story doesn’t end there.
She finds herself in the afterlife, tethered to her death spot, her reach tied to the adjacent apartments. As she rides the elevator up and down, the lives of the residents intertwine. Every one of them has a dark secret. An aging trophy wife whose husband strays. A surgeon guarding a locked room. A TV medium who may be a fraud. An ordinary man with a mysterious hobby.
Compelled to spend eternity observing her neighbors, she realizes that any one of them could be her killer.
Review
Received the audio through NetGalley, and I thought that Rachel Fulginiti did a great job with this.
This was a unique story for me. I was for the most part pulled in by the cover, so I did not give the blurb a read. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was not for the main character to be murdered in the very beginning of the story! I guess I thought with the book’s title that it would be about her being haunted, not killed and becoming a ghost! (FYI, that is revealed in the blurb, so not me spoiling). So, it was a nice surprise and worked for me as a plot twist. Sometimes going in blind is a plus.
The main character is believable and relatable. Her grief and paranoia has pushed her to become a complete agoraphobe inside her well secured apartment complex. Even though she completely cuts herself off from the outside, it’s not enough to keep her safe. Nothing is. I didn’t really feel like that was creepy while listening to it, but now that I’m writing it out it surely does.
The author does a great job subverting a lot of the expectations around paranormal activity—what a ghost can do, and can not do, may surprise you a lot. It is much more along the lines of someone normal trapped in the in between of life and death, than it is like a malignant spirit in movies.
The author weaves a very twisting story, where every character, and every interaction, may lead to another clue or even another mystery. My only gripe is I did feel like this went on to the point where the main character’s story is a little less mysterious than I wished it would have been.
Synopsis
Would you sell your hand for a million dollars?
Regan “Roz” Osbourne is broke. Her ex-boyfriend won’t take no for an answer, and no one is taking her art work seriously. So when a mysterious stranger offers her a million dollars and safety from her unstable ex in exchange for her left hand, she can’t afford to refuse.
Immediately following the amputation, she’s racked with insufferable phantom limb pain. Desperate for relief, she enrolls in an experimental drug trial. But this drug has a peculiar side effect―she develops a psychic connection to her missing limb. She soon discovers that Chicago’s long-dormant Phantom Strangler is now wearing her hand and is using it . . . to kill.
Review
I love the cover for this one, and I really enjoyed The Ghosts of Thorwald Place, so I wanted to get into this one ASAP.
I was interested in this novel right off the bat. The blurb sounds much more like a scifi thriller than a horror, but I figured we’d still get elements of darkness. Would you sell your hand for a million dollars? I have to be honest, I thought “it wouldn’t be that bad” more than once. You’d still have a hand to use! And you’d have $1,000,000! What could go wrong?
Let me tell you, it wouldn’t be all sunshines and daisies. Regan thought like me and then she started suffering from intense pains. Pains in her hand…that was no longer there. While that phenomenon is real, the author takes it and gives it a more scifi spin. It’s dark and eerie, and has so many what-ifs attached to it that it will make you sick.
I really enjoyed the doubled meaning of phantom, as the novel also features a serial killer on the loose known as the Phantom Strangler. Now I did guess the twist VERY early on, but that didn’t suck the fun out of it for me, because even as someone that reads (and even writes) mysteries, I am seldom right somehow. So the verification kept it going for me.
Personally a 4/5*! Well written and a very enjoyable unlikable-liked main character, in a kind of Jessica Jones-y way.
Both of these have things that will appeal to fans of horror. Ghosts is more paranormal or supernatural murder mystery, and Phantom plays heavily into it’s sci-fi thriller notes. Both are worth picking up!
Leave a Reply