The Sleeping and the Dead
A Mystery
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A new mystery series starring a Memphis crime scene photographer with ghostly assistance
Jackie Lyons, a former vice detective with the Memphis Police Department, is trying to put her life back together. Her husband has served her with divorce papers, she's broke, and her apartment has just gone up in flmaes. But a failed marriage, unemployment, and an incinerated home aren't her only problems: she also sees ghosts.
Since Jackie left her job with the MPD, she's been making ends meet by photographing crime scenes for her old friends on the force, and for the occasional collector. When she's called to the murder scene of the Playhouse Killer's latest victim, she starts seeing crime scenes from a different perspective-- her new camera captures spectral images. As her camera brings her ghostly visitors into sharper relief, it also points her toward clues the ex-detective in her won't let go: Did the man she has just started dating kill his wife? Is the Playhouse Killer someone in her inner circle?
As Jackie works to separate natural from supernatural, friend from foe, and light from dark, the spirit world and her own difficult past become the only things she can depend on to solve the case.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fantasy author Crook (Conundrum) introduces Jackie Lyons, a former Memphis PD vice detective battling self-destructive tendencies, in his disturbing first mystery, a mix of the hard-boiled and the supernatural. To make ends meet, Jackie has begun to sell photographs of crime scenes, mostly relying on the patronage of ghoulish Michi Mori, "a sugar daddy who demanded no sugar." After Jackie impulsively buys a new camera from a handsome stranger, mysterious images start to show up on her film, manifestations, she later realizes, of the ghosts she has always seen. Meanwhile, the notorious Playhouse Killer's latest theatrically inspired murder distracts her from her efforts to decipher the images' message. While Jackie's crude, callous narration may not win her much sympathy, her rough edges and erratic behavior make it difficult to turn away. Crook deftly explores the human fascination with the macabre at the same time he draws attention to the reader's own voyeuristic impulses.