Los Angeles, California – Mid 1990’s

Attorney Whitney Logan, a young, not-yet-successful lawyer, needs a high profile case to make her name and draw clients to her practice. Right now that practice barely makes her a living, especially since she must pay former prostitute Lupe Ramos’s salary as her secretary, translator and friend. Whitney is no fool, however. And while not necessarily naïve, she is a loner who finds her idealism challenged by her clients. She likes her Southern Comfort in the evening, and desires something long-term in both friends and lovers. Something she lacks that leaves her vulnerable.

Whitney accepts the public defender case of Tony Red Wolf. Tony, a handsome, imposing Native American, was accused of beating his girlfriend, Shirley Yellowbird. Whitney gets him off, but then receives a middle-of-the-night call from Tony demanding she meet him. When she joins him at a mission in San Gabriel Valley, she finds Shirley’s dismembered body in a trashcan. Tony proclaims his innocence, but Whitney has reservations. With Lupe’s help, she slowly works through the Native American subculture, largely unseen in Los Angeles. She investigates the events leading to Shirley’s death, finds and questions Shirley’s friends and enemies while running into hostile Indians, shamans and unexplainable happenings along the way. It becomes obvious that Shirley wasn’t an innocent person, but what about Tony? Could he be the killer, and how can Whitney find his obvious interest compelling?

GHOSTTOWN is the posthumous novel of Douglas Anne Munson writing as Mercedes Lambert. She died in 2003 of cancer. This story is the third in a series about Whitney Logan, who first appeared in DOGTOWN in 1991 and then in SOULTOWN in 1996. The publisher rejected GHOSTTOWN in 1997 because the story contained paranormal elements. It seems strange that something so commonplace in mysteries today was unacceptable a decade ago, but the author also handles her otherworldly element in a different manner from today’s paranormal mystery writers. While GHOSTTOWN starts as a relatively contemporary novel, hints given from the beginning lead to the unusual ending. The story’s manner is dark and hard-bitten, but the dialog and the scenic descriptions lighten the narrative while the characters are unique and well developed. Whitney’s meandering investigation throws a light on both Spanish-American and Native American cultures in L.A., but it is the ending that creates a sense of wonder, perhaps even disbelief, that this is how it ends.

Robin Lee