The Nitty Gritty: Cameryn Mahoney is the teenage daughter of the town corner. Now many girls her age would put as much distant between her father's profession and her social life. Who wants to hang out with a girl who's father drives dead bodies around in the family station wagon?
Not Cammie. She fully embraces the science of death and wants to follow in her father's footsteps. Much to the chagrin of her Irish grandmother.
In a stroke of genius she offers to work as her father's assistant to get a feel for the job before she rushes off to college to cast her lot with forensic science.
She is still standing after her first body pickup. An unfortunate natural death left to ripen in a grubby motel bathroom. Cammie thinks she is ready for her first case. to her horror its the body of a her good friend, Rachel. To make matters worse its looking like her friend is the victim of the serial killer known as the Christopher Killer.
Determined to get justice for her now dead friend Cammie pushes her way into the investigation. She has to match wits with a dictator of a medical examiner and a television psychic who is already predicting another Christopher killing.
Opening Line: "Yes I can be there in half an hour. Any idea of when he died?"
The Good: The premise for this YA book I have to say is wholly original. In an age of fang bangers, vampire bodyguards, shadow hunters, and Divergents and its a breath of fresh air that a female protagonist wants to actually use her brain for something other than thinking about a golden haired teen god.
Forensic science is not the field of choice for a lot of people and even less for females. Even looking at the CSI shows there is one female to every three male characters. So I love that Ferguson came at the YA genre with a brand spanking new twist. Its a refreshing vacation from the lusty werewolves and sultry vampires.
I just wish this book was based in a larger city where Cammie could have actually done some investigations. It could have really progressed to something fantastic.
The Bad: As a devout follower of all CSIs I love a book about the science of crime and murder. Though this wasn't as much CSI as I had hopped. Well frankly it was a single a chapter during the autopsy of Rachel. I think Ferguson missed a great opportunity to introduce children to the science of investigation. Camyrn and her father are the town's only crime scene investigators and they just didn't do any investigation. She opened a few drawers and took some pictures.
A book hailed as a forensic mystery just fell short on that aspect. As much research as the author claimed to have put into this I didn't see any of it. I mean the majority of this stuff could have been picked up from Law & Order.
I think Ferguson remembered that this is a YA book and had to water Cammie down to give her mass appeal. Its never a good idea to write for the market. After all you're book isn't put on the shelf as soon as you get done with it. With a neophyte author there could be years between your finished book and its new home on the shelf at Amazon or Barnes and Nobel. Writing for the market could put you behind the curveball with a lag time like that. Ferguson should have just given us a brilliant girl wanting to get into murder and death and left it there. There was so much potential for Cammie to get right up there with Katniss Everdeen or Hermione Granger or LEP REcon officer Holly Short or even Enola Holmes.
She could have introduced the tension between her age and her chosen profession in the book at a more climactic time.
I hate when I read a non fantasy book that has fantasy elements. Though I am sure this was not by design of the author. The plot point of brining the mother back into the picture was sloppy and lazy and it forced me to suspense all disbelief in a book with too much science to make that plausible.
Please allow me to explain, Cammie lives with her father and her Irish grandmother who forgets that she is not Cammie's mother, but is for another argument. Her mother left some years ago without any explanation. She just packed up her little suitcase and blew through town like a drunken tornado. Rightly so the entire family has written her off. With good cause if you ask me. I don't want to keep anyone around who doesn't want to be around. Well during the course of the book we discover that the new deputy in town has been given a task that rips open the old "mother" wounds for Cammie. Which makes no sense whatsoever. The mother has been a none issue for the family for years, I just don't understand trying to reintroduce her back into Cammie's life at this juncture. Then to use a character that had no reason to be in the story but to be a dues ex machina.
It smacks of sloppy writing and irritatingly soap operay. Yep, that's my word and I am going to own it.
Unlike the more famous of amateur sleuths like Jessica Fletcher, Miss Marple, Phyrne Fisher, or Harry Dresden, Cammie is not good at detecting. She is actually really bad at it. Like my first Tonka CSI kit from Toys R Us, bad. She stumbles blindly from one theory to the next with no concrete clues to lead her other than the culprit looking different from the mainstream. As a black person who often times finds herself in the company of no other person of the dark persuasion I take offense to this overused reasonings. It keeps the different on the fringes of society because it reenforce the irrational fear of the different or the unknown.
Oh Ferguson tries to give her credibility by having her trip over an "important" clue in the motel room of her first body. Nice try honey. That might have worked during the heyday of Jiggly TV favorite Charlie's Angles or Miami Vice, but after a steady diet of crime drama during prime time the public isn't that easily fooled anymore. She could have sent a prayer up to Richard Castle and gotten a better trail of clues if she were really pressed for plot help.
I guess I'm spoiled because of Law & Order, CSI, NCIS, Castle and the like. Murder is more flamboyant than the Christopher Killer and I was looking for that. Not over the top SAW sort of murder, nor the Murder, She Wrote, sing you a lullaby before I tap you on the back of the head murder. Just a little more. Somewhere in between. This was too Murder, She Wrote for the modern age of serial killers.
Final thoughts: I really enjoyed the parts of the books that didn't revolve around Cammy's whining about her missing mother. Which came more frequent that I would have hoped dealing with a book about the death of a her good friend. If her mother can be shelved till I no longer care about keeping my sanity I would pick up the second book.
