Judas and the Ghost
Memento Mori Book Two
At a Glance
- Best for
- Readers who want darker queer crime, investigative tension, public judgement, and character psychology under pressure.
- Tone
- Suspenseful, morally tense, intimate, and deliberately uncomfortable.
- Reading order
- Book 2 of Memento Mori. Read The Boy with the Crow first.
- Heat / intensity
- Adult, explicit, and emotionally intense.
- Content note
- Contains suicide, sextortion, privacy violations, coercion, grief, explicit sex, strong language, and psychological distress.
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Blurb
At a Halloween photo walk, Tara Linskey’s private image appears in public.
The threat is theatrical, cruel, and impossible to ignore. It is signed The Judgement. By morning, Tara is dead.
Detective Bria Friday has worked ugly cases before, but this one is built from the things people perform and the things they hide: sex, access, passwords, jealousy, friendship, grief, and the vicious confidence of anyone who thinks shame is a weapon. Tara’s circle offers suspects, witnesses, and versions of the truth that do not agree with each other.
Mason Maloney should be peripheral. He is not. Still carrying the aftershocks of Cassandra O’Neill’s case, Mason becomes one more unstable piece of Bria’s investigation: witness, complication, and reminder that the past never stays politely closed.
As Cork moves from Halloween spectacle to forensic fact, Bria has to find the person behind The Judgement before another private life is turned into evidence.
Judas and the Ghost is Book 2 in the Memento Mori trilogy: a police-led Cork psychological crime novel about sexual privacy, coercion, grief, evidence, and the ghosts made by public cruelty. Best read after The Boy with the Crow.
Why you’ll love it: A psychologically sharp second case that brings Bria forward, keeps Mason under pressure, and turns a public accusation into a maze of grief, shame, consent, and motive.
Behind the Pages
Judas and the Ghost moves the trilogy from one private obsession into a broader public reckoning: who gets judged, who performs innocence, and what evidence can never quite repair.Reviews
This book deals with the complexities of grief, trauma, forgiveness, and relationships in a masterful way, and kept me on the edge of my seat.
The characters were so well written and enjoyed the suspenseful atmosphere and figuring out what was happening.
Dark, thoughtful, and psychologically sharp, Judas and the Ghost is a slow-burn crime novel that rewards patience and close attention.
Read-alikes
- The Hazard and Somerset Mysteries — Gregory Ashe 2017 · Queer crime mystery
Dark mystery continuity with damaged relationships and serious emotional stakes.
- Madison Square Murders — C.S. Poe 2021 · Police procedural mystery / romance
Procedural investigation and queer relationship tension in a death-haunted mystery lane.
- Dublin Murder Squad — Tana French 2007 · Irish literary crime
Psychological Irish crime comparison; useful for tone, not for romance expectation.