Just Finished Reading: Ghosts of War by George Mann (FP: 2011) [348pp] 

New York, 1927. It started with the birds falling from the sky – dead before they hit the ground. Then the disappearance's, random, sudden, unexplained. The police responded in the only way they could, with warnings in the newspapers and over the radio, with talk of a curfew and with increased airship patrols. Still the abductions occurred without apparent rhyme or reason. The Ghost watched from above and caught only glimpses of strange looking brass creatures seemingly searching for something. He wanted to discuss them with his police contact but Inspector Donovan had other priorities. The commissioner himself had tasked him with an important matter of national security. A British spy had obtained information vital to the nation's defence and needed to be tracked down and stopped immediately. All other tasks must be dropped. The spy was Donovan’s top priority. If the spy managed to leave New York it could mean another World War. But both the Ghost and his friend the Inspector knew that such a request didn’t feel right. Tracking down spies wasn’t something the NYPD did, that was a task for the Secret Service. Plus, why was an isolationist politician putting so much pressure on Commissioner Montague which he then applied to Donovan? Maybe they both needed to find the spy (if he even existed) and talk to him before handing him over to the authorities – unless the long-predicted war with the British Empire broke out first! 

This was the second book in the Ghost series (two more to go) and as much as I enjoyed the first book – with a few minor caveats – I enjoyed this one more. As I’d hoped after reading the first book, the author expanded his world a little and we discovered a bit more about the Ghost’s background and experiences during the Great War and his early encounter with a tentacled creature in No Man’s Land. We also discovered a bit more about the British Empire and it’s less than amicable relationship with the growing power of the United States. The Ghost also had a new love life, or actually a reintroduced love life, in the shape of Ginny who turned out to be a capable asset who could handily cope with a shoot-out or an encounter with an alien beast from another dimension (always useful in a girlfriend I think!). Although I was a little disappointed by the baddie in the previous book, I had no problems at all with this one (or actually with this cabal plus the ubiquitous mad-scientist). Each baddie was suitably bad, with few if any redeeming qualities and even fewer moral scruples. We were obviously supposed to cheer when they came to bad ends and, in true pulp style, we did when they did! The inevitable final ‘boss fight’ was handled very well, especially when it looked like the author had painted the Ghost into a corner but got him (and the rest of the world) out of it without use of any ‘magical’ device or anything like that. Things were solved by ingenuity and the application of sufficient – or more than sufficient! - force. Overall, this was a solid work of SF, alt-history, horror tinged, steampunk and I really enjoyed it. I’ll definitely be reading the other two books later in the year – probably when the nights start drawing in again – as I’m still intrigued with the world the author created and where he’s going to take us next. Definitely recommended for steampunk and HP Lovecraft fans.