Posted: July 27,2020
The Gray and Guilty Sea
The introduction of a memorable cast of characters sadly marred by a forced resolution of the mystery.
This is a good book for anybody who knows what's it like to give up - for any reason. Garrison's particular reason is pretty dramatic - he and his wife were assaulted, leaving her dead and him disabled. Most of us, thankfully, don't have such colorful stories. For us it could be a business or career failure, not making a sports team, getting kicked out of school. Any situation that causes us to walk away and just stop and not try again.
For five years Garrison Gage has given up. Living in Oregon and doing crosswords; doing nothing.
"The Gray and Guilty Sea" is about a man who slowly and figuratively comes back to life in three ways.
The first way is by becoming a detective again. One of the more interesting characters in this book is Alex Cortez, an ex-FBI agent who is living his dream retirement as the proprietor of a used bookstore. At one point during the story Alex very insightfully informs Garrison that being a detective is who Garrison is; that by taking on the case of this dead girl he, Garrison, is becoming himself again. A big part of the enjoyment from this book is watching Garrison become himself again.
The second way Garrison comes back to life is through the attraction that Carmen Hornbridge has for him. Garrison is obviously not interested in a romantic attachment but Carmen is relentless. The way she does it is very classy, very subtle. To be fair, Garrison is such a block of granite that it would not have worked if not for circumstances helping out Carmen a bit.
The third way that Garrison comes back to life is through a crisis that forces him to virtually adopt a sixteen year old named Zoe. A close reading of the book will show that of these three events this is the one that scares Garrison the most. He likes being a detective, Carmen is a stunner, but being this father figure blindsides him; he's simply not ready.
I got this book for free on Amazon Kindle and I picked it up because the cover was attractive. So how do I like it? Very much. I like it so much that I bought the second book in the series "A Desperate Place for Dying". I bought it because I want to know what's next for Garrison and the people surrounding him. I also bought it because author Scott William Carter deserves to be paid for turning out such quality work.
The big weakpoint of this book is, unfortunately, the mystery itself. The buildup was done well enough but the way Carter wraps up the mystery leaves much to be desired. He forced an action-packed ending which raised a lot of questions regarding the timing and plausibility of the whole thing.