Disgraced journalist Philip Trudeau makes ends meet by reporting for a suburban newspaper. While covering the seemingly routine death of a young boy at the Yarraville level crossing, Trudeau is immersed in a world of art fraud and political corruption, and is once again forced to confront the people who destroyed his marriage and career years earlier.

After Gadd unsuccessfully attempted to have his debut novel published for a number of years, the Ghostlines manuscript saw renewed interest after winning the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award last year. The author’s anxieties about the novel are channelled through Trudeau, resulting in a complex and captivating protagonist who would’ve otherwise easily fallen flat.

Gadd’s novel is stylistically reminiscent of yesteryear’s film-noir: a brooding and introspective narrator, a damsel in distress, and the obscured forces of power and influence doing their best to ensure Phillip lets sleeping dogs lie. Gadd’s evocations of Melbourne’s western suburbs are interesting, but it’s his incorporation of supernatural themes later in the novel that makes Ghostlines memorable.