Book Review: Ghost Detective by Scott William Carter


Imagine being shot in the head and then waking up from a six-month coma to find you can see ghosts; ghosts who are just as real to you as living human beings, thus plunging you into a surreal state where you can’t tell who’s alive and who’s dead. That’s the premise of Ghost Detective, a paranormal mystery novel by Scott William Carter set in modern-day Portland, Oregon.

I got this book on Amazon a few weeks ago when it was on sale for .99 cents. Since I like paranormal/supernatural stories and detective mysteries, it seemed a fairly good fit to my interests. The main character, Myron Vale, is a former Portland police officer whose career ends tragically when he’s shot during a robbery at the local Starbucks. Still retaining the bullet in his brain—comfortably nestled in the space between the two hemispheres—Myron finds he can now see and communicate with ghosts, and they are everywhere.

This is because in the Ghost Detective universe, all the people who have ever lived are still hanging around. As far as Myron knows, no one has been shuttled off to heaven or hell. Instead, the dead continue to exist alongside the living in a sort of limbo. It’s never explained in the book why that is, and god appears to be non-existent. Instead, this hidden society of the unseen dead is managed by the Department of Souls.

The book follows Myron as he struggles to deal with the hand that fate dealt him while helping a recently deceased woman find her husband who looks a lot like the man who shot him all those years ago.

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