Just in time for Halloween, Bill Noel returns to Folly with Wraith
from Staff Reports
Just in time for spooky season, author Bill Noel and his daughter Angelica Cruz are once again littering Folly Beach with fictional dead bodies.
Noel and Cruz’s latest novel, Wraith: A Folly Beach Halloween Mystery, arrived Sept. 1, giving fans of Noel’s long-running Folly Beach Mystery series a suitably creepy read for October. The 30th installment brings back reluctant amateur sleuth Chris Landrum and his considerably more enthusiastic sidekick, Charles Fowler — and this time the island’s Halloween decorations provide cover for something much more sinister.
Halloween is already Chris’ least favorite holiday when he and Charles encounter a particularly convincing decoration: a corpse hanging from a gallows in a yard crowded with ghosts, goblins, and other seasonal scares.
Unfortunately for Chris, this one isn’t fake.
Charles promptly appoints the pair to investigate, sending them after an appropriately colorful cast of suspects that includes a woman who dresses like a witch year-round, a wheel-chair-bound curmudgeon, and a fellow Halloween hater who travels with a macaw.
Then more bodies begin turning up.
Each victim is accompanied by a mysterious message branded into leather, leaving Chris and Charles to figure out the connection—and stop the killer before one of those mes-sages is intended for them.
The 346-page mystery continues a series Noel began with Folly in 2007. A retired university administrator and fine-art photographer from Louisville, Kentucky, Noel was approaching 60 when he decided to try his hand at fiction. What began as an experiment eventually grew into a 30-book series built around Folly Beach’s familiar combination of colorful characters, local landmarks, and slightly offbeat island personalities.
Wraith gives that familiar setting a seasonal makeover, turning one of Folly’s most col-orful holidays into the backdrop for another Chris and Charles investigation.
After 30 mysteries, one might think Chris would have learned that when Halloween rolls around on Folly Beach, it’s probably best to stay home, turn off the porch light, and definitely not investigate anything that looks like a dead body.
