I was drawn to this Australian book by Kim’s review that describes it as caught between a crime story and a romance. Although she made it perfectly clear that it focused on medical matters, I was nevertheless surprised by the intensity of the focus. The story is told by a woman with cystic fibrosis about her doctor and secret lover who was found dead near the hospital where she was at the time. Initially it was unclear how he died, but eventually suicide was ruled out and it was clear he had been murdered.
Ruby Rose Gillespie and the doctor, the beautiful and brilliant Gabe, had been high school friends, college lovers, then later secret lovers and he had been the surgeon who did her lung transplant surgery. Ruby was a brilliant student, but we learn how her life is circumscribed by her illness and her assumption she will live a short life. Ruby tells the story in bits, not always reliably, and we move back and forward in the lives of these characters without warning. She tells the story in a sometimes oddly dispassionate voice.
But I loved meeting the characters: her sister who became an attorney, improbably called Titsy. Pete is her stolid, but lovely husband, the plumber, whose panel truck says “Leaky Pete” in cursive on the side. There’s Nigel, another member of the group of brilliant high school pals and Phoebe, Gabe’s younger sister. When Nigel was delivering a rant, having just asked Ruby a question, it was Phoebe’s father who said, “‘I think you’re supposed to stop speaking after you ask a question, Nige,’ said Phoebe’s father, settling into a chair. ‘It’s the way conversations work.'”
The book is set in Perth in Western Australia and I enjoyed the Oz-language, like Nigel being called Nige. “Sooking” is a new word for me; it means being wimpy or whiny. Ruby says, “Horses are awful sticky-beaks; they have to know what’s going on.” Such a great term for being nosy.
I was confounded when the author ended a chapter with a mystifying description of Pete arriving on Ruby’s doorstep, dissolving into tears, and exclaiming, “Oh Ruby.” I wondered what I had forgotten or skipped over, until sometime later, the tragedy that brought the plumber to tears was casually referred to. Oh good, I thought, it wasn’t me failing to remember a key event.
I must apologize for my SPOILERS. I find it hard to write without spilling the beans, because I am writing to be able to remember bits of a book.
The end is told by the now-dead Ruby, who lived a long life despite her illness; the chapter begins with her describing Titsy scattering her ashes over the sea. We learn how it was that Gabe died, as Ruby can see the event and replay it for herself over and over. Despite the oddness of this end, we do learn the details of the murder of Gabe and I found it to be a satisfying crime story. As a romance, I found it less interesting because Gabe was so clearly never a real partner and perhaps just barely a real character. One of his failures as a human related to ethics in medical research. And then I found it hard to imagine that someone who was always drinking and ingesting tabs of fentanyl is a successful surgeon and researcher. Though I have some reservations, I thoroughly enjoyed this as I read it.
Karen Herbert, The Ghost Walk, Fremantle Press, 2025, 274 pages (I read the Kindle version). Not available in the public library.