Bisbee and the Haunted (Psycho-Mystery 27 on Acid)

David A. Ek’s Bisbee and the Haunted (Psycho-Mystery 27 on Acid) has the energy of a late-night cult film. It is loud, strange, and willing to push past good taste if that is what the moment needs. That kind of ambition can go wrong fast. Here, it gives the book much of its kick.

The novel’s strongest asset is The Inn at Midnight Rock, a worn historic hotel in Bisbee that survives on ghost lore, repairs, and stubborn hope. Ek knows how to use a setting for more than a backdrop. The Inn gives the story shape, pressure, and visual force. Its themed rooms, twisting halls, old well, and haunted reputation make it feel ready-made for a camera. You can see why everyone in the book projects something onto it. It is a business, a ruin, a fantasy, and a trap all at once.

Ek also has a feel for staging scenes. A reporter comes looking for a fraud story and finds a place already on edge. Workers make a reckless mistake at the old well. A celebration on a steep slope turns dangerous. Later, a flood changes the scale of the story and throws every weakness into view. These scenes have movement and punch. Even when the novel wanders, it does not go slack.

At the center are Graeme, the owner, who is trying to keep the hotel alive, and Jordan Smithers, the manager, whose attachment to both Graeme and The Inn has begun to harden into something unstable. Their relationship gives the novel its emotional strain. Around them is a busy cast of skeptics, meddlers, opportunists, and fools. Not every character gets equal shading, but the ensemble does keep the book in motion.

The haunting is only part of what Ek is after. The novel also reaches toward damaged memory, buried shame, local myth, and the uneasy business of turning a troubled past into attraction and brand. That gives the story more weight than a simple ghost setup would have. The eerie material matters, but the book stays interested in what people do to each other, and what certain places seem to draw out of them.

The novel is messy. Some prose runs hot. Some characters are broad. Some reveals come in hard. Still, Ek commits fully, and that counts. He is after a book with spectacle, mood, and emotional bruises, and he gets there often enough to make the whole thing work.

Readers who want a neat mystery may resist it. Readers who like haunted fiction with visual flair, big swings, and genuine oddness will likely have a good time.