The Ghost Script

Hollywood is haunted. 1953. Ghosts abound. In particular, the ghost of Detective Sam Hannigan-murdered in Bay City twenty-two years earlier by Addie Perl, the hired assassin who then bought a Hollywood nightclub with her blood money. Among the nightclub's favored clientele is Sam's widow, Elsie. Blinded by a Japanese bullet while on a USO tour in the South Pacific, Elsie has been reinvented into "Miss Know-It-All," a Hollywood gossip columnist. But blind Elsie is haunted by the ghost of her husband, Sam, who asks her accusingly: "If Miss Know-It-All knows so much, why can't she find Cousin Joseph, the man who had me killed?"

Hollywood is haunted. Spooks abound. Agents Shoen and Kline, investigators for the House Un-American Activities Committee, manipulate the blacklisted, buxom, over-the-hill starlet-turned-hooker Lola Burns into working for them and naming the names she had once refused to betray.

Hollywood is haunted. Communist screenwriters Oz McCay and Faye Bloom are noisily plotting, boozing, and laughing their way toward their impending disaster.

Hollywood is haunted. As an inside joke, writer-director Annie Hannigan-Sam and Elsie's daughter-comes up with the idea of a "Ghost Script" that may or may not exist but is rumored to expose the inside story of the Hollywood blacklist and the names of its undercover masterminds, most notably the reclusive philanthropist Lyman Murchison, a superpatriot with a dirty secret.

Hollywood is haunted. Stumbling his way through this maze is private eye Archie Goldman, a tough-talking, nebbishy good guy who's never been in a fight he didn't lose. Archie's single aim is to live up to the memory of the ghost who haunts him: Detective Sam Hannigan. Trail along with Archie into the middle of this muddle, as he tracks the arc of history and finds that it has rounded itself off into a circular firing squad.

In this antic and brilliant assault on our past and present, Jules Feiffer shows us, once and for all, that if there's one thing Americans hate, it's learning from past mistakes. Every twenty years or so, a new generation must address new biases and injustices that are virtually identical to past biases and injustices. But who remembers? Exposing the tragically cyclical path of American history, Jules Feiffer pens the final installment to a noir masterpiece.

“"Feiffer's terrific trilogy, which began with Kill My Mother (2014) and Cousin Joseph (2016) and concludes here, was meant to pay apolitical homage to noir, writes the author in his foreword. But politics found him, and a plotline that originated in the previous book unfolds against a backdrop of union-busting, Communist hysteria, and the Hollywood blacklist. Fascinating female leads Elsie, Patty, Annie, and Dorothea are still present, still trying to get by, and like most art about repressive times, it's really about how people live (or don't live) with impossible choices... Feiffer's fractured funhouse mirror of a plot features plenty of surprises (despite frequent flashbacks, readers new to the series should definitely start at the beginning), and his themes of gender fluidity, doubles and disguise, and divided loyalties are as engrossing as ever.... his line work still contains irrepressible energy, and subtly hued, mostly duotone inking explodes like fireworks with bursts of color. A fitting finish to a late-career triumph."”

"Feiffer is a master of sequential art and he takes us effortlessly on a story of betrayal and revenge with plenty of twists to the plot to keep the tempo fast moving and totally engrossing. The characters are created with both empathy and insight that ensures they keep our attention and the plot stays believable." -- Gnash Comics
"Eighty-nine-year-old Jules Feiffer is a comics legend, and The Ghost Script proves that age is just a number when it comes to telling a compelling story... Feiffer’s skill at juggling noir tropes with real-world Hollywood history is fascinating… he hits every twisted beat, enlists and skewers every stereotype, and employs his trademark drawing style to excellent effect – there’s a fluidity to every character, a subtlety that proves you don’t have to fill in every detail of a face and body to make the subject come alive on the page." -- Starburst
"This is a vibrant, speedy and, yes, at times angry, account of the McCarthy era in Hollywood circa 1953, a mix-up of private eyes, pinko writers, Union goons and right-wing loons." -- The Herald
"Less emotionally stressful, though with deep seriousness lurking beneath its shrewd wit and artistic energy, is Jules Feiffer’s The Ghost Script ... the third in a trilogy of graphic novels by a veteran cartoon satirist (Feiffer is 89). In straggly, super-vivid monotone art, it pays homage to the Spirit comics of Will Eisner, whom Feiffer once assisted, and the PI stories of mid-century Hollywood." -- Tim Martin - The Spectator
"... a mark of Feiffer’s mastery is that everything seems inevitable once it has happened. It’s convincing genre fiction." -- New Statesman

Jules Feiffer (1929-2025) was a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, children's book author and illustrator, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He taught a humor-writing class at Stony Brook Southampton College and lived in East Hampton, New York.

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