The Pluperfect Phantom

“That was a clever hoax you tried to perpetrate. Aged the remains . . . stored her in a hundred-year old steamer trunk . . . deep-froze her in a snow bank . . .” Detective Morrison of the Chicago Police Department confronts Thad Majeski. At his wit’s end because a phantom has just abducted his current girlfriend back in time to 1893 Chicago, Thad is now accused of the murder of his ex-girlfriend. He must somehow transport himself to a bygone era, rescue Ottilia, and dispatch the ghost of the serial killer who has bedeviled him for several months. This is no ordinary haunting, for the chilling purpose of the ghostly visitations is to spirit women away in the present and murder them in past time. The charming psychopath is the spirit of Chicago’s first documented serial killer, Dr. Herman Mudgett, alias H.H. Holmes.

About the Author

Olivia Diamond’s books of poetry are: Women at the Well, Land of the Four Quarters: A Poetic History of the Incas, Geography of My Bones: Collected Poems, Please Trespass Here, Playground, and Be Thou A Man: A Poetic Tribute to Saul Alinsky. Her novels include Gardens Under Which Rivers Flow, and Gerontion and the Maiden, Delayed Reaction, and The Wheels of Being. The trilogy—Voice of Stone, Conquistadora, and Daughter of the Conquest—dramatizes the story of the Inca Empire from the period immediately before Francisco Pizarro’s arrival through the Spanish conquest and colonization of Peru. Her roots are in Illinois, but she now makes her home in northwestern Montana.

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