I enjoyed this book throughout, yet it didn't seem particularly special until the end, when several interesting elements all came together. More often, I have the opposite feeling. I will thoroughly be enjoying a novel, until it just fizzles out with an ending that doesn't match the quality of the previous 300 pages. In this case, it was a pleasure when the last 20 pages suddenly made this book a keeper, rather than something I was going to exchange at a used bookstore. Speaking of exchanging books, I've lately been trying out (read: addicted to) a service called Swaptree.com, where you can trade books and other media with other users. It's free, except for postage, so I was quite thrilled to trade the rather tedious "North Dallas Forty" (which I gave up on after about 80 pages) for this very satisfying novel.
"The Ghost" is narrated by a ghostwriter to a former British prime minister accused of war crimes. As a writer, I could certainly identify with the narrator, but perhaps a little too much. At one point, he has two weeks to ghostwrite an entire memoir, and for some reason he goes off to investigate a bunch of war crimes instead of writing. Dude, you have a book to write, I kept thinking. What are you doing? I may be quite the procrastinator at times, but I'm proud to say that I have never ever gone off on some war crime investigation lark when I had a deadline looming. That's because I'm a professional.
