Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
When the roar of a low-flying plane awakens him in the middle of the night, Sheriff Winston Barnes knows something strange is happening at the nearby airfield on the coast of North Carolina. But nothing can prepare him for what he finds: a large airplane has crash-landed and is now sitting sideways on the runway, and there are no signs of a pilot or cargo. When the body of a local man is discovered—shot dead and lying on the grass near the crash site—Winston begins a murder investigation that will change the course of his life and the fate of the community that he has sworn to protect.
Everyone is a suspect, including the dead man. As rumors and accusations fly, long-simmering racial tensions explode overnight, and Winston, whose own tragic past has followed him like a ghost, must do his duty while facing the painful repercussions of old decisions. Winston also knows that his days as sheriff may be numbered. He’s up for re-election against a corrupt and well-connected challenger, and his deputies are choosing sides. As if these events weren’t troubling enough, he must finally confront his daughter Colleen, who has come home grieving a shattering loss she cannot fully articulate.
As an unabashed fan of Wiley Cash’s earlier Southern noir tales of broken and bedraggled people clawing for something better for themselves or those they care about in the contradictory gumbo of small-town North Carolina, it’s been a long seven-year wait since his CWA Gold Dagger-winning This Dark Road to Mercy (punctuated by Cash’s historical tale, The Last Ballad, entwined with 1920s union conflict).
In When Ghosts Come Home, Sheriff Winston Barnes and his cancer-battling wife are woken by a plane coming in low over their home in coastal North Carolina. It’s the 1980s, the town has a small airstrip, but no one should be landing at night. When Sheriff Barnes, who’s in the final days of an election fight he’s destined to lose, discovers a large plane crashed yet completely empty, and the body of a local black man shot dead nearby, he embarks on an investigation that will forever alter him and his community. As rumours fly and tensions crackle, Barnes also has to deal with a visiting FBI specialist and his own daughter, who’s made a surprise visit home from Texas as she continues to grieve a heart-breaking loss.
Trauma weighs down many characters in Cash’s latest novel, which sings along on lyrical prose, rich characters, and an exquisite sense of place. Can Sheriff Barnes find the killer before he’s kicked out of office by local developer Bradley Frye, who seems more interested in power than justice? Will the racial tensions in town explode as Confederate flag-waving trucks terrorize the Black neighbourhoods?
Cash weaves a rather wonderful tale - and for much of the story When Ghosts Come Home threatens to match or somehow better the layered and lyrical brilliance of A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy. But Cash set the bar very high with his first two crime novels, and perhaps here he wobbles it rather than clearing it clean. Some events may divide or dismay readers (and there’s perhaps a shade too much ‘author hand’ to deliver a desired effect here and there). But overall, Cash has once again delivered an exceptionally fine novel.
When Ghosts Come Home is something to savour.
Note: this is a lightly edited version of a review first published in the Fall 2021 issue of Mystery Scene magazine in the United States.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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