Review: BRILLIANT! Don't judge this book by its cover.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 2, 2012
If you judged this book by its cut-and-paste-clipart cover (like I almost did), you'd be seriously missing out. As a self-published author, Richard Goodship may not have an eye for designing a cover, but he sure as hell knows what to put on the pages behind it.The Camera Guy was remarkably brilliant on so many levels. It had the bones of an excellent detective novel, but it mixed in unexpected elements of the paranormal and theological. Think of this as a film noir-style detective story meets Angels and Demons and The Exorcist.It's hard to describe the plot and what's good about this book to a person not reading it. Trust me, I've tried. From the moment I told my husband, "Well, the detective sees dead people - not like The Sixth Sense dead people but the victims at his crime scenes. And that family of ghosts that follows him around his apartment. But that's it." I knew this was one of those books where you have to be reading it to really understand.Sixteen years after a tragic accident during a robbery set him on a downward spiral, Bill is a forensic detective and photographer who has lost his family, his faith and the respect of some on his police force. The accident that turned his life upside down also left him with the ability to see the spirits of the deceased at his crime scenes until they move on to... wherever they move on to.Bill seems to be resigned to living with his own personal demons, but when something truly demonic awakens to feed on the souls of the dead, he must face his past and his faith to stop it before it causes more carnage.And carnage, well, there's plenty of that in this book. Although I'm not into gory books, I'd say I have an above-average tolerance for those types of situations. This book even had my stomach turning at parts (and I didn't even think about reading right before dinner). As gross as it was, it all made sense. From a CSI perspective, the gruesome bodies gave clues to find the killer. From a theological perspective, it was so awful and unimaginable that you could not help but call upon faith to understand it.This isn't a neat-and-tidy story. There isn't an obvious hero or even cut-and-dry antagonist. I think that's what made it so interesting, though. You never really knew what was going to happen because the characters didn't abide by stereotypes.Anyway, great read. I hope Goodship gets on with his follow up soon!