Joe Henderson hasn't had such a good time of it lately. Due to a bullet to the knee, the Detective has had to retire earlier than he anticipated. His wife left him, and ne now spends his days with his booze and nicotine. When the house across the street one afternoon is surrounded by police, Joe gets off his butt, using his golf club as a cane, and ambles across the street. The man who lived there for forty years was no friend of his or the neighborhood, so its no loss to Joe that the man is dead. But Joe wants to know why Preston Swedge was the way he was, and his death scene doesn't look right.
When the Swedge house and its contents go up for auction, Joe is lucky enough to get the papers and a few diaries from the basement. As he looks through them one afternoon, he is stunned. The diaries belong to a Jewish-American pilot named Paul Rothstein. Paul was supposed to have dropped his bomb on the gas complex in Auschwitz, but for some reason not explained he doesn't and three hundred thousand people are killed.
Joe doesn't understand why Preston would have these diaries for one, and another, he wants to know why Paul didn't drop those bombs. He starts investigating, and his path leads him back to the past where politics play with human lives, and also, for himself, back to living.
HOUSE OF GHOSTS is a remarkable read. Characters full of personality and a mystery full of twists and turns had me turning the pages late into the night. Kaplan spins a wonderful web from the past to the present that is sometimes confusing, yet leads authenticity to the story. I hope to see more of Joe Henderson in future novels. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
