RON GOULART – Ghosting. Raven House, paperback original, 1988.

   A writer of very funny mysteries and science fiction, Goulart has said he likes to mix “murder, bug-eyed monsters, and satire.” Ghosting contains no BEM’s, but there is plenty of murder and satire. The hero, Barney Kains, is “a defrocked commercial illustrator who got dragooned into the comic book business” as a ghost writer for the comic strip “Poor Little Pearl.”

   It seems Archie Judd, the creator of the strip, is down with the flu for the moment. And since Archie’s granddaughter, Beth, is the first woman who’s been able to get Barney’s mind off his ex-wife, a top model whose picture is everywhere, the job is all the more enticing.

   But Barney begins to have his doubts about Beth when he learns that Archie’s tirades from his sickroom are on tape: There’s no one in Archie’s bed. What’s happened to the artist? Barney has no choice but to poke around and find out.

   This is a delightful piece of fluff with lots of laughs and good material about the comics biz.

   Another good Goulart mystery with a comics background is A Graveyard of My Own ( 1985) which introduces Bert and Jan Kurrie, a husband-and-wife team of amateur sleuths. Goulart’s other whimsical crime novels include the futuristic Hawkshaw (1972) and four books in the John Easy private-eye series, the best of which is One Grave Too Many (1974).

———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.