I just realized today how many dark books I've been posting about. The first book was about the murder of ten people abandoned on an island. The second was about a boy who was going to die from a terminal disease. The third was about kids who have to kill each other in order to win food, fame, and the right to survive. The fourth was about a boy who got involved with drugs and death. And this one was about a serial killer who murders too close to home for the main character.
"The Christopher Killer" is about the daughter of the coroner of a small town of Silverton, Colorado, named Cameryn. She wants to be a pathologist, despite her grandmother's wishes, and when she is given the chance, she becomes her father's assistant. She thinks that she will love this job, but suddenly, the deaths come a little too close to home.
This book looks at the business of forsenics with two different views. One is the views of the pathologists, who are used to the procedure and look at the person they are working with as no longer human. The other view is Cameryn's. Her view is that the deceased are still very much human. At least they are when one of her friends is murdered by the infamous Christopher Killer.
Cameryn's friend is found strangled in the wilderness at the same place described by Dr. Jewel, a world renowned psychic. Dr. Jewel is famous for finding the bodies of the victims of the Christopher Killer and solving many cases with his special powers. At first, Cameryn is skeptic about Dr. Jewel, believing that he is a fraud like all other psychics. But when he points out things that he shouldn't know about Rachel, like what she was wearing when she was killed, begin to make her think Dr. Jewel is a real psychic. Soon, she begins to listen to Dr. Jewel and draws to the conclusion that the deputy of Silverton, Justin Crowley, is the killer. But then, during a private reading with Dr. Jewel, she finds out he takes DMSO (a drug often used for horses) for his stomach. She then begins to add 2 and 2 to discover who the killer really is. There are many facts that suggest who the killer is all throughout the book. And it isn't Crowley. The Christopher Killer is Dr. Jewel.
While all this murder stuff is undoubedtly the most important part of the book, there are other things in the story. For instance, when the book begins, for some reason, Cameryn's dad hates Deputy Crowley. He hates him because, as we discover later in the book, Deputy Crowley dated Cameryn's mother, who abandoned Cameryn and her father when Cameryn was young. The end of the book reveals, in a letter to Cameryn from her mother, that the death of Cameryn's sister, Jane, drove her mother into a manic state of depression. She left, not wanting to harm Cameryn, and cured herself. I believe she will meet Cameryn in the later books.
"What later books?" you may be asking. Well, this book is the first of a series, and I really want to read the rest. It was a very good book that had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. But hopefully, I won't choose such a dark book for my next post.
This book talks about science vs. psychics a lot. Cameryn's best friend, Lyric, and an odd boy named Adam, both are big Dr. Jewel fans (until they find out he killed innocent girls in order to maintain his image.) Cameryn lets psychics lead her to suspect someone else of the murders, even though she knows the tricks of many phsycics. However, even today, police officers use psychics, like in a couple episodes of "Numb3rs". Do you think this is a good choice? Tell me in your comments to this post, or answer in my poll.
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