Dancing Around the Four Sides

That does sound disturbing! But overall is a good story, or a not-so-good one?

I felt like a little bit of noir era detective fiction myself recently and purchased a novel based on recommendations which sounded like it should have been good -- 1920's San Francisco, with a ghostly theme thrown in. It won several prizes also. It started out good but fizzled -- not enough character, not enough history of the era, and not really frightening, alas.