The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James was the feminist, cold-case mystery I didn’t know I was waiting for. It has everything. It has intrepid amateur detectives. It has vengeful female ghosts. It has delicious justice and women coming together to deliver it. Added to all of that, the mystery was executed perfectly.

In fact, here’s the one-line review I posted on Twitter:

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St James is so good that I realized my hands where shaking when I was turning pages at the end. Highly recommend

— Elyse (@ElyseIndeed) February 15, 2020

The book is set in two different timelines, 2017 and 1982. In 1982, Viv Delaney is struggling with her parents’ divorce. She runs off intending to make it big in New York City, but winds up in the small upstate town of Fell instead. She ends up taking a job at the Sun Down Motel, a rundown motor lodge, watching the office during the night shift.

The Sun Down Motel is a character in its own right. It’s outdated and weirdly suspended in time. It’s also definitely haunted. There is no ambiguity about ghosts in this book–they exist. Viv is startled by the ghost of a woman, Betty Graham, who was murdered and dumped at the site the hotel now occupies. Betty is an angry ghost, turning off lights, slamming doors, and generally terrorizing Viv. There’s also the ghost of a child who died in the hotel pool and of a night clerk who died in the office.

She researches who Betty was and learns that there have been a string of murdered women in Fell. Viv believes these women are connected, and later thinks she knows who the killer is. He’s connected to The Sun Down Motel as well.

We alternate between Viv’s story in 1982 and that of her niece, Carly, in 2017. Carly’s mother recently died and feeling unmoored, Carly goes to Fell, NY to look into her aunt Viv who disappeared in 1982. She even gets a job at the same motel, working the same night shift. She researches the murders that have haunted (literally) Fell for decades. She is plagued by the same ghosts that Viv was.

The alternating timelines work beautifully at creating tension. Because we know Viv disappeared in 1982, her storyline has the suspense of a clock counting down. Something happened to her, but we don’t know what, and as she pursues her investigation into the missing women, we feel the danger she’s in acutely.

There’s also the eerie quality of Carly occupying the same space her aunt did 35 years ago in a place that feels supernaturally out of time. Nothing has been updated at The Sun Down Motel, the wifi doesn’t work, and cell reception is spotty at best. All of this creates an atmosphere of spooky isolation that feels vaguely Gothic.

St. James also nails the weirdness that comes for working night shift jobs. I’ve worked the night shift before and you have a strange feeling of loneliness working (even with other people) while the rest of the world sleeps. Everything feels a little spookier, and in my personal experience, weird shit happens between one and three a.m. that never happens on the day shift.

In Carly and Viv’s case, they’re working alone and the guests of The Sun Down Motel, both living and dead, are outsiders and outcasts. It makes for a quirky cast of characters. Carly rents a room from an insomniac named Heather who knows a lot about Fell’s murderous history. Viv makes friends with Alma, a cop who works the night shift, and Marnie, a photographer whom she meets at the hotel one night.

I loved that the novel kept that feeling of isolation to create a creepy atmosphere, but Viv and Carly still had friendships and support. All five of these women are drawn into the mystery surrounding Fell’s murdered women, and all of them are necessary for the book to reach its conclusion.

I can’t tell you more than that about the ending without giving away lots of spoilers, but I will say the female rage here is strong and the end is deeply satisfying. The mystery is executed flawlessly and everything is resolved in a way that felt equal to the tension preceding it.

I love a good scary mystery, and The Sun Down Motel had all the elements to make it perfect. I loved the Gothic atmosphere, the theme of women coming together to get justice for other women, and the excellent momentum of the pacing. Other than possibly being too spooky for some, I can’t come up with a single reason why anyone should avoid this book.