Let me offer a disclaimer before I jump into my review of PAPER GHOSTS. I was so taken with the concept behind this tale that I would have given Julia Heaberlin a solid ‘A’ for effort even if it had been flawed in the execution. That said, the author’s plan successfully survives the fog of the battle known as publication. Haunting photographs peppered throughout the narrative (please avoid the urge to peek) constitute an additional reason to read PAPER GHOSTS in one sitting. It picks you up, carries you off, and spoils you --- at least temporarily --- for anything else.

The first person narrator is a young woman named Grace, who is obsessed with the mystery of her older sister’s disappearance over a decade before the novel’s present. Grace believes that she has found the individual responsible in the form of Carl Louis Feldman, one of the more interesting literary characters you are likely to encounter during this or any year. Carl gained fame for having published a bestselling book of photographs some years previously, and achieved notoriety as the suspected serial killer of several women. After being tried, but not convicted, for one murder, he went off the grid for a few years, only to subsequently reappear exhibiting symptoms of dementia.

"I will not forget any time soon the setting of the final revelation, at which point Grace gets her answers. It’s a simple scene, and the more startling and real for it. Set all else aside to read this fine and memorable work."

As PAPER GHOSTS opens, Grace has traced Carl to a private care home. Convinced that he knows her sister’s fate, she temporarily removes him from the home under false pretenses and begins a 10-day road trip through Texas, hoping to obtain a confession from him as they visit the sites of some of his more chilling photographs, as well as places where his possible victims were last seen. Grace has her doubts that he is suffering from dementia, and Carl doesn’t believe it when she tells him and everyone else that she is his daughter.

The result is a potentially dangerous game of mobile liar's poker, played out from Galveston to Houston to Marfa and beyond. Grace has everything meticulously planned out, but Carl isn’t cooperating, happy to throw a monkey wrench into her plans with impulsive actions and an occasional frolic of his own. Of course, Grace is always on high alert, given that she may be riding with a serial murderer. As their trip progresses, she becomes increasingly certain that Carl is nowhere near as infirm as he has made himself out to be. Neither she nor the reader has any idea what will happen next, making each page --- particularly those containing the haunting conclusions --- all the more shocking.

Don’t expect a lot of flash-bangs and explosions over the course of PAPER GHOSTS. Heaberlin doesn’t need them. She is a very subtle wordsmith, hinting in places instead of telling and preferring suspense to outright horror. I will not forget any time soon the setting of the final revelation, at which point Grace gets her answers. It’s a simple scene, and the more startling and real for it. Set all else aside to read this fine and memorable work.