Review: Ghost Notes, Doug Johnstone - latest instalment of the Skelfs

Run by three generations of Skelf women from their family home in Edinburgh’s Bruntsfield, it’s a forward-looking undertakers adopting the latest eco-friendly methods. Mother Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah have also been amassing employees and romantic partners in the course of their adventures, resulting in a busy cast of supporting characters whose backstories relate back to earlier volumes in the series.

 Luckily for readers, the three Skelf women themselves have very distinct personalities, and as people who deal with death every day have developed their own ways of looking at the world. Dorothy, the nurturing matriarch, finds fulfilment in drumming for a choir composed of refugees on her time off. Quietly, she frets about her boyfriend Thomas, who is currently in prison and refusing to see her. Her daughter Jenny, faced with encroaching middle age and fears that her self-destructive nature will ruin her relationship with her partner Archie, finds herself having to face the possibility that she might be an alcoholic. Jenny’s daughter Hannah has a background in physics, her spiritual insights frequently arising from the contemplation of sub-atomic particles.

For Ghost Notes, Johnstone has hit upon a genuinely disturbing and all too believable premise: an AI app that can imitate dead people. These avatars give mourning relatives a comforting presence to talk to, which is not only creepy but sounds detrimental to the grieving process and mental health in general. Johnstone has taken note of how AI can veer off its programming in unpredictable ways and, to make matters worse, these “grief-bots” have started urging loved ones to join them in the afterlife.

Ghost Notes is out now (Image: Orenda)

The novel opens with the funeral of a man who has taken his own life after spending too much time on the app. His widow collapses at the graveside and is not happy to be revived by Dorothy’s CPR. When Dorothy discovers that the dead man spent long hours talking to a digital recreation of his late daughter, and finds out that the company behind it is conveniently located in Edinburgh, she doesn’t need much encouragement to take a closer look.

This is the most interesting, and perhaps under-explored, plotline of Ghost Notes, but each of the Skelf women has a strand of her own. While Dorothy is pursuing the creators of the grief-bots, Jenny is trying to track down the person responsible for blackmailing an old schoolfriend over her affair with a younger colleague, an investigation that takes a more serious turn when people start turning up dead. Hannah, meanwhile, has to deal with the appearance of her wife Indy’s ex-boyfriend, who claims to be dying and wants the Skelfs to handle his funeral. He brings with him an unexplained bagful of money and revelations about Indy’s past that make Hannah question the foundations of their marriage.

Switching between these plotlines every chapter or two can make the experience a little disjointed, but the Skelfs all get a chance to shine, each faced with a situation that pushes them out of their comfort zone and illuminates their characters, knowing that their family’s always got their back. Long-term fans of the series are always ready for the chance to settle once again into the warm and supportive Skelf funeral home, but the good news is that it’s a welcoming place for newbies too.