Ghost Detective (Myron Vale Investigations #1) by Scott William Carter

Published: 6/19/2013

Publisher: Flying Raven Press

Pages: 293

Genre: Ghosts/Mystery/Fantasy

Review: ebook

Amazon

Everybody dies. Nobody leaves ... Award-winning author Scott William Carter returns with his tenth novel, a spellbinding tale of a man who bridges both sides of the great divide.

After narrowly surviving a near-fatal shooting, Portland detective Myron Vale wakes with a bullet still lodged in his brain, a headache to end all headaches, and a terrible side effect that radically transforms his world for the worse: He sees ghosts. Lots of them.

By some estimates, a hundred billion people have lived and died before anyone alive today was even born. For Myron, they're all still here. That's not even his biggest problem. No matter how hard he tries, he can't tell the living from the dead.

Despite this, Myron manages to piece together something of a life as a private investigator specializing in helping people on both sides of the great divide--until a stunning blonde beauty walks into his office needing help finding her husband. Myron wants no part of the case until he sees the man's picture ... and instantly his carefully reconstructed life begins to unravel.

I am slowly trying to get through my list of books to read, and this was one of those books. I liked the premise of this book is the fact that Myron can communicate with ghosts. The only bad thing about that is he cannot tell you if the person is dead or not unless he tries to touch them. Which was repeated a lot.  Another neat thing about Myron is he use to be a cop, so by opening up his own investigation business and using those skills, he can help those that are ghosts. I found it bittersweet that he still got to see his wife, and you can tell he has so much love for her. Though I know, it had to be heartbreaking at the same time. With this newest case that Myron takes on, it ends up being more than he expected. The answers he seeks will come to light, and he will have to face the truth on certain things. The storyline with Myron can see ghosts, helping ghosts even to the point that it probably drives him crazy, I liked. What I did not like, and I had to drop my rating, was describing people, especially black people. 'He was a tall and black, impressively tall and black, the kind of height and skin color that would have made heads turn.' This was just one of the many descriptions that bothered me with describing characters, no matter how small they were. I understand why an author describes characters, but I felt it was overly done. The back and forth between the past, the recent past, and the now really threw me off at times. I had to stop and reread what I read to make sure that I was reading it correctly. 

My favorite quote: "She was a book written in braille, and I was a blind man who'd never been taught to read."

SCOTT WILLIAM CARTER’s first novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “touching and impressive debut” and won an Oregon Book Award. Since then, he has published many books, including the popular Garrison Gage mystery series set on the Oregon coast, as well as the provocative Myron Vale Investigations, about the private investigator in Portland, Oregon who works for both the living and the dead. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two children.

Find out more about him at scottwilliamcarter.com.

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