"I wanted to write a book that . . . my hero, Mark Twain, would enjoy reading," says Jack Cady. And indeed, this novel is so full of biting humor and hilarious fatalism--not to mention a century's worth of spirits out and about in a small coastal town--that you'll come to believe that somewhere Twain's ghost is laughing as he reads it. A few hints at the novel's riches: a defrocked hippie priest who plays the violin for his multilingual cat; blood-choked screams that people set their watches by; a tourist trade selling Victorian funerals with all the trappings; an evil that twists and whirls like red shadows in a room where a man dances with a corpse. Cady has spun a great yarn, with all the proper Victorian sentiments: guilt, remorse, melancholy, pride in duty.