Running short on cash and behind on his bills, Castor takes a case when he'd really rather not. The case seems like a simple one though, a regular haunting in a museum--a simple get in, find the ghost, exorcise the ghost, get paid, and leave kind of deal. What he ends up in however, is anything but normal. The museum director wants him gone, the assistant director is even less friendly, the staff are all a bit off in different ways and the ghost itself seems to be hanging on for what Castor can only figure is some kind of revenge. And so, he begins to dig into the building, the staff, and his eventual discovery that the building had previously been exorcised.

This is an interesting premise, not that the idea hasn't been done before in any number of different formats and genres, but Carey infuses the work with a sense of foreboding exhaustion that wraps the characters in such a way as to bring the settings to life. Being able to communicate with the dead surely must be as Carey envisions it, with a plus side and a minus side and with the added danger that if ghosts exist then perhaps so do demons and the realms that both such beings inhabit. Along with this comes the danger that your average ghost may be something entirely different. He also takes the time to draw things to a few logical conclusions which I won't discuss here because they are somewhat central to the plot, but which add a depth to the work that usually does not exist in such offerings.

Overall, this was a very interesting book with quite a few creepy parts and some humor sprinkled about almost as an afterthought. Castor, the main character is sympathetic and well drawn, exhibiting a sense of weariness that surely much some with such work as exorcism. Carey does a great job developing setting and scene with atmosphere and enough real world fatalism to bring the whole thing to life. For all of this the pacing is critical and Carey does an excellent job of moving everything forward at just the right speed. Ultimately, this is a very good mix of horror, mystery and plain good story.