I love a ghost story and this one is gorgeous. With a dual timeline, in New Orleans in modern times and a hundred years ago, its protagonists are a successful modern woman and a poor girl living long ago in the notorious red light district of the city, linked by distant blood and driven by a century old crime.Simone Doucet – you may have met her in a previous novel but nothing lost if you haven’t, it reads well on its own – has a gift of second sight, but only in relation to her own long dead kith and kin. One of them, Bleu, has become an insistent voice in her life and also a glorious character in her own right – she took a hold of me as well, just like she took hold of Simone and her friends!Her story is painful, tragic, no doubt reminiscent of the lives of many real girls living at that time, and beautifully told as a counterpoint to the lives of the modern young people who find themselves caught up in her demand for justice after her life is shattered by a terrible crime.The setting of a old colonial city at the height of a festival was a perfect backdrop for a ghost story. In festival time, everything is heightened, fantasy is powerful, anything could happen…. I’ve never been to New Orleans and probably never will, but the city of the story felt familiar to me – we have festivals too, and a city whose underbelly is still scarred by old injustices, colonialism, prostitution, and whose exoticism is a magnet for excited tourists. The suspense of the story grafted perfectly into the world I knew, and I felt each step of the story vividly.Beautifully written, nicely plotted, the right amount on spine tingling suspense. I really enjoyed this book.