What can you say about Tim Powers? Who else can spin a ridiculously simple plot into over 600 pages without any sense of stretching? At first, you might think this is no more than another contemporary horror story; but the horror is brief, and it soon becomes clear that this contemporary America is not – exactly – ‘our’ contemporary America. Where ghosts are alive (in a manner of speaking) and the prey of wealthy addicts who ‘eat’ them – generally they’re snorted like an exotic cocaine. Where certain individuals can clinically ‘die’ yet continue to behave as if they are alive – zombies, yet outwardly normal. Where the sprightly shade of Thomas Alva Edison, Harry Houdini’s mummified thumb and a disgraced psychiatrist (and amateur bruja) outwit the ghost-eating bad guys. In short, a vast, exuberant romp of a novel, as full of life – despite the fact that several leading players are dead throughout – as in his classic The Anubis Gates.

The selection of Edison is probably no random choice; what Powers has created, essentially, is a world where the inventor’s spirit phone (a matter of historical record, actually) would really work. Great fun.