Were it not for the ending of Mickelsson's Ghosts and the fact that it's in large part a campus novel, this might have been my favorite thing Gardner's written. It's meant to cover what Gardner saw as the three main types of ghost stories: The first is the Scooby-Doo story where the ghost turns out to be some guy in a mask. In this case, that guy is a member of the Mormon extremists The Sons of Dan and his mask is that he's a mild mannered historian. The second is the story a protagonist haunted by his crimes, with Gardner going for a middle aged Raskolnikov sort of feel here. The third is actual, no shit ghosts and I think he nailed gothic horror every time he leaned in. My biggest gripe with the book is that Gardner put too much of himself into the protagonist and couldn't handle giving him a tragic ending; Mickelsson lays the Jewess of his dreams and regains the respect of his peers through Sexual Magic in a scene that felt entirely unearned. That said, it's probably Gardner's funniest book - there's a scene of Mickelsson going through intrusive gay thoughts and compulsively comparing them to Barry Lyndon that got a genuine belly laugh out of me.