Quiet horror is still one of the most effective subgenres of our field, especially when done right. One who knew how to do it as well as anyone, and probably better, was the late Charles Grant. He could make your skin crawl with one short description that included no blood, no gore, no grue. He had a gift with crafting quietly disturbing scenes of hauntings, literal and metaphorical, or—just as effectively—of stalking and unnatural surveillance.

Award-winning author and editor (The Lucid Dreaming, Midnight Walk, The Halloween Encyclopedia) Lisa Morton's The Castle of Los Angeles brings to mind such quiet approaches. An appropriately eerie novel of a reputedly haunted theater, it's really about art and artists. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The comparison to Grant is not a literal one, for in Morton's style her version of "quiet" has loud, edgy—and even nasty—undertones that occasionally, and intentionally, overpower the softer elements.

When Beth Ortiz is given the opportunity by her old friend Eric to buy out his tiny theater and living space in The Castle, she jumps at the chance. The Castle is an elderly building in a borderline seedy area of LA, its first floor a small box theater and its upper floors divided into lofts and a penthouse. Beth is a talented playwright and director, and—taking a leap that includes quitting her job—immediately plans to write a new play to premiere in The Castle. This enthusiasm almost outweighs her sadness in seeing Eric leave, despite the fact that all their friends think they've always belonged together.

Beth begins an edgy play based on a strange diary found hidden in a theater wall and the life of a very young hooker she finds slumped near her car one morning. The diary seems to be a killer's scrapbook from decades ago. While Beth uses Linda and her fellow hookers for research into their world, they begin to disappear as it seems a killer has begun to prey on them. In the meantime, she meets the eccentric wealthy artist and her personal assistant who live in the penthouse. Jessamine Constanza's eerie paintings and her interest in the Qabalah creep out Beth, who is nevertheless drawn to the artist. When Beth starts to see ghostly presences, and another Castle resident commits suicide shortly after meeting her, she knows the swirling events are related. But how? And when her play, Half and Half, begins rehearsing, something strange happens to her friends, the leads. The skeptic in Beth dismisses the weirdness, all while watching it escalate. When Eric returns, the final piece of the puzzle is replaced—and to say more would ruin your enjoyment.

Nicely built suspense and a tightening of the screws on the audience's nails makes this a California gothic worth checking out. Morton's everyman characters react realistically to the bizarre events that surround them, and The Castle briefly becomes a character in its own story. But ultimately it's all about Beth the artist and metaphorically the novel seems to attempt delineating what separates art from artist. There are no missteps, though at 178 pages the novel feels rushed in places and could have used a little more dressing on its minimalist stage. Lisa Morton's ode to the theater arts and art in general shines through the grotesque, which does rear its head before the last act in time to help shape the denouement. Rightfully praised by famed author Gary A. Braunbeck in a jaunty introduction, The Castle of Los Angeles is, like a contemporary play, an effective use of great storytelling to entertain us while telling us something we didn't know about ourselves.