ALMOST

Benedict (Safe Conduct, 1993, etc.) returns with a pseudo-mystery about a ghostwriter chasing a ghost—and her guilt—through a story that is successful in spite of itself.

Sophy left Will three months ago, and Will died three weeks ago. A novelist who makes extra dough ghosting for contemptible celebrities, Sophy has, since the separation, re-established her life in New York, when she gets the news of Will’s demise (possibly a suicide, because of you-know-who). Sophy feels called to Swansea, a Martha’s Vineyard–style island where she has some history, and, once there, she wades through the clutter, both literal and emotional, that trails sudden death. Will’s CIA background, a celebrity friend’s sex scandal, and a missing girl provide a flavor of mystery that makes for some weird fun. Sophy isn’t entirely likable as a narrator—she has a penchant for not-so-funny one-liners—and as she wanders about looking for answers that won’t come, it’s a pleasure to watch her unravel some. In fact, it’s the people on the fringes who seem the most real here: a set of Vietnamese adoptees, a bartender who recognizes Sophy from AA meetings, Ben, the neighbor who discovered Will’s body, and Will himself (who’s more interesting than Sophy, even though he’s dead). Benedict’s pop-culture references threaten to give her prose the shelf life of a Ding Dong, while the many references to texts seem intended to remind us that, despite the ghostwriting, Sophy really does have a significant library. Still, Sophy’s journey brings her to a touching bit of earned sentiment: her mysteries are more rhetoric than romance, and she is ultimately ordinary.

If you’re not tired of novelists trying to write novels about novelists trying to write anything, then here is an amusing ride through a mystery whose solution is that it isn’t a mystery at all, but life as lived.