Judas and the Ghost

On Halloween night in Cork, someone weaponises a private photo—and signs the threat: The Judgement.

On a rain-slick Halloween night in Cork, a university photo walk turns into a spectacle nobody can look away from. Veiled frames ignite in a flash of unnatural white fire, and the crowd is left staring at a nude image of the club’s star organiser—paired with a moralising threat from an anonymous account calling itself The Judgement.

Detective Bria Friday arrives to a house that’s suddenly become a sealed box: a shared student home where everyone loved Tara Linskey, needed her, envied her—or feared what she knew. The people closest to Tara have the neatest access and the messiest motives. Her adoptive sister Shannon, her boyfriend Declan, her closest friend Finn, and ex-housemate Riku all have reasons to lie, and all had proximity to her laptop, her passwords, and the private photos now weaponised.

With a missing phone, a stolen key, and digital breadcrumbs that lead nowhere clean, Bria has to decide whether she’s looking at self-destruction—or a staged ending designed to make someone run. And then there’s Mason Maloney: an uneasy witness tied to the house, already haunted by a previous case that Cork won’t let him forget. As Bria pulls at the threads—sextortion, jealousy, and the careful choreography of public shame—she risks repeating the one mistake she swore she wouldn’t make again.

Content notes: strong language; sexual content; moderate violence/peril.
Series: Book 2 of Memento Mori. The central mystery is self-contained, but the emotional arc is best read in order.