Review: Ghosts Know

Ghosts Know by Ramsey Campbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(Review from 2nd reading, Dec. 25 2018)

I originally read this novel in November 2013, so rereading it yesterday was fresh. I'm sure I got more out of it as well (smile). Mr. Campbell here again demonstrates his genius at locality, as he does in THE OVERNIGHT, which I had just finished the night before reading GHOSTS KNOW. Manchester radio personality Graham Wilde hosts a talk show on WAVES radio, a media operation about to be taken over by the Frugo conglomerate (which figures prominently in THE OVERNIGHT as well). Wilde has a temper issue, which he struggles constantly throughout the novel to control. Unfortunately, he is not the only one. He is set off by an "American psychic," about whom some of his callers rave. He and his producer/girlfriend Christine attend one of the psychic's appearances in Manchester, and Wilde unearths facts about the man calling himself Frank Jasper. From ( there, everything unspools, and I do mean everything. As with much of Mr. Campbell's fiction, a feckless protagonist who, with good reason (genetics and nurture) has serious psychological issues, is unable to discern the correct steps to take and more or less plays the Minotaur blundering through a china shop. The consequences are dreadful, of course, and not just for the protagonist.

I was so absorbed that I read this novel in one day (on Christmas).

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