Delilah never made it home after her shift at Magda’s club. Her body was discovered early the next morning. Yet, Delilah is still around. Her ghost travels La Salle, Wisconsin, as her former boss and a stranger from out of town try to find out who killed the young woman in Isabelle Spotts’s intriguing novel, Saint Delilah. La Salle has some very dark history that refuses to stay in the past.
Delilah, at first, cannot remember what happened to her in the hours before she “woke” as a ghost in the woods outside of town. All she knows is that she needs to get as far away as she can before something unspeakable catches her. Thankfully, her former boss, Magda, has always run a startlingly accurate sideline as a medium. In fact, Delilah met Magda after the older woman visited her home after Delilah’s sister died. Delilah has one other ally: Cross, a friendless, family-less man who can see ghosts. After conventional policework fails to turn up a suspect, Magda gets to do things her way, with homegrown witchcraft and a lot of gumption.
This isn’t the first time I’ve read a mystery narrated by the ghostly victim. Years ago, I read The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold—an incredible and mournful novel. Saint Delilah is not about forgiveness and moving on in the way that The Lovely Bones was. There are a lot of vengeful feelings in Saint Delilah and I am here for it! Delilah’s growing anger at the way men treated her after she started dancing at the club and at her murder adds a lot of necessary tension to the book. Not only does this create a strong sense of righteous fury to the novel for us readers to savor, it also introduces the strong possibility that—if Magda, Cross, and Delilah can’t find out what happened—Delilah will become a murderous poltergeist.
There are some parts in Saint Delilah that required me to be more forgiving about plausibility. (What is wrong with the local sheriff just giving up? Does Cross and Delilah’s relationship give me the ick or not?) I was willing to roll with these because of the relative novelty of having a ghost narrate part of the investigation into her murder, but also because of the lore Spotts developed in her setting. In fact, I wish we got a bit more of that lore in lieu of some of the scenes between Delilah and Cross. Best of all, the ending is fantastically cinematic.
Mystery fans looking for something more original—and spookier—might enjoy Saint Delilah.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.