Cav Crawford has a lot going on. He’s a college student. He has a side gig as a PI. Oh yeah—and he sees ghosts.
When four teenage boys disappear while ghost hunting but only one reappears days later (covered in blood and with no memory of what happened), the police point the finger at the boy. The boy’s parents hire Cav to prove his innocence, and it doesn’t take him long to realize he’s in over his head. To complicate matters, Cav unintentionally summons the ghost of his dead boyfriend, who can’t seem to move on.
As the investigation deepens, Cav unearths disturbing similarities between his current case and a decades-old murder-suicide. By the time he realizes the power of the dark forces at work, it’s too late—he’s caught the attention of the killer, and he’ll soon learn there’s more than one kind of death….
Professional Reviews
Queer Sci Fi Review
Cavanaugh “Cav” Crawford survived several traumatic tragedies in his family at a young age. To others, he seemed to be a strange child, and was teased a lot. But he’s fortunate too – he still has his Grandmother and two wonderful adopted parents in Jason and Eli. At twenty-two, he is attending Waring University, with a major in criminal justice and a human services specialty.
Right now he’s trying to figure out why he needs Professor Lawson’s class, World Religions, which he has to do better in. Cav’s schedule is full, with both college and his job. He started out as an intern for Sutton Walker, a private investigator. He worked hard and got his license. and is now a PI, with special cases that Walker gives him. And he has a secret!
Sutton Walker is very trusting, and has confidence in Cav to do his job right. He gives Cav the cases that involve young teens who run away or go missing. Cav has already completed one and brought Summer, who’s non-binary, back home. Summer is very misunderstood by their parents, but Cav hopes things will change.
Now, Walker has given him a baffling case about four missing teens: Kyle Itoh, DJ Juarez, Wade Smith and Gareth Miller. The boys had gone ghost hunting and were never heard from again, until Gareth Miller is found with no memory of what happened to him.
Even while he’s neck-deep in this baffling case, Cav needs to keep up with his school assignments. Because of Professor Lawson, Cav is approached by Kyreh Chambers, who’s also in his World Religion class. The Professor suggests they pair up and write a paper for extra credit about ghosts and what others have experienced. When he and Kyreh finally meet, a friendship starts to form, and Cav wonders if it could be more. But he’s not ready to date yet, even a year after losing Mason.
Gareth has not recovered from his memory loss, and the missing boys case is growing more complicated. Cav seeks help from his Grandmother, and from Professor Lawson, who has all kinds of pertinent information to add. In the end, Cav will take a deadly chance to do what he can, and will have to reveal his secret.
Cav will have to deal with his own mistakes, and promises to solve a death for someone close to him. He will also face four sets of parents who are dealing with the tragedy of their own missing sons in different ways. As he digs deep into a horrific crime, he will have to decide whether to let it go, or to forge ahead and solve it.
Aterovis’ new series is filled with moments of sheer terror and gore. The author delved deep into Gaelic Folk magic, blood magic, protection spells, herbs, sigils, ancient Greek poppet or Kolossos, and how beliefs of different religions and places deal with ghosts and the world of the occult.
Cav and Kyreh are wonderful and charming in their own ways, a breath of fresh air. Kyreh stays by Cav’s side to protect him any way he can. I loved the sweet and steamy relationship that grows between them.
I also loved the fact that Josh Atervois gave two women important roles in this novel. Cav’s Grandmother, who has her own story to tell and knowledge to share, and Professor Lawson, who has no problem admitting she’s a witch. Also, the most important of all, Mason McKibben, who has a sad tale of his own.
Along with them, there’s a very interesting line up of side characters: Jason and Eli, Cav’s adopted dads; Jordan, who works at the PI firm; Haniah, Cav’s roomate, who’s bisexual and came from Ghana to America to live openly; Det. Sgt. Zebulon Mead, who knows Cav’s boss, Sutton Walker, and at times is suspicious of Cav.
In 2017, I had the chance to review Aterovis’ Bleeding Hearts, “A Killian Kendall Mystery.” I had passed this book up because it was YA and I thought I wouldn’t like it. When then the second book came out, I decided to take the chance, and from there, six books later, I was hooked.
It’s been a long time, but I am ecstatic that this author has returned with this new series. I highly recommend A Kind of Death – these new Cav Crawford Mysteries have a lot of potential. Once again, Aterovis has captured my attention, and I’m ready for more!
--Maryann
Out In Print Review
Josh Aterovis is back at doing what he does best – writing young adult detective novels with a mystical and gay romance slant. His latest title, A Kind of Death, introduces a new, young private investigator who is grappling with a missing persons case while learning about his gift of “sight,” which was passed down from his Irish ancestors who had a powerful connection to ancient Samhain traditions.
For fans of Aterovis’s Killian Kendall series, the characters and themes will be familiar. In fact, the book feels like a spinoff from that gay teen PI/ghost whisperer universe. Like Killian, the lead man, Cav, was taken in by two surrogate gay dads due to a tragedy with his biological family. The setting is the mid-Atlantic region, here Baltimore and its environs. Cav was hired by a private detective agency at an unusually young age and has to balance work and college, where he’s studying criminal justice. Cav also has a connection to a hidden spiritual world, which aids him with his sleuthing. Aterovis’s previous Killian Kendall series explored Native American belief systems. The Cav Crawford series delves into Gaelic pagan practices, which is what makes the story unique.
Cav gets set up with quite an intriguing case. Four teenage boys went missing after sneaking out late at night to go ghost hunting, and then one of them, Gareth, is found ambling along a country road, covered in blood which is not his own. Gareth remembers practically nothing about their ghost hunting adventure, not even where it took place or what happened to his friends. But given the circumstances, he’s a person of interest for the local police, and his parents hire Cav to sort out what happened that fateful night and hopefully exculpate their son.
We learn early on that Cav is not your typical college student. He lost both his father and mother as a child, and he inherited the ability to see and communicate with ghosts through his mother’s Gaelic roots. Further, his boyfriend, Mason, was the victim of an unsolved murder just one year ago. As Cav gets oriented to the case, his connection to the supernatural world quickly comes to bear. While interviewing Gareth, Cav senses the amnesiac boy might be possessed by an otherworldly entity. Shortly thereafter, Mason shows up in Cav’s bedroom, and he similarly has no answer to what happened on the night when he was killed. Cav is still grieving Mason’s death, thus the situation stirs up two major issues of unfinished business. How did Mason die, and can or should Cav move on from their relationship?
Aterovis packs in abundant material for stretching Cav’s starter installment into a series. While Mason has returned to disrupt Cav’s attempt to come to closure with their relationship, he also meets a classmate, Kyreh, who he wouldn’t mind getting to know better. Figuring out that situation will take some time, and Cav’s hands are too full with Gareth’s case to go looking for answers to Mason’s murder in this first book. But one can see those storylines making for good material in the future.
Thus, readers may forgive that there’s a heck of a lot going on in this one novel. The detective procedural storyline is quite complex in and of itself. Once Cav identifies the abandoned house that the missing boys were exploring, he discovers a connection to an unsolved triple homicide that happened there over forty years ago. Cav needs to solve that case in order to solve the case he’s being paid for, and meanwhile he has a lot to learn about his abilities as a medium. Luckily, he has his Irish grandmother to teach him her knowledge of Samhain practices, as well as his World Religions professor who happens to be a witch. Those storylines about ancient mysticism are imaginative and engaging, and meanwhile there’s the open question of what Cav’s going to do with a real life romantic interest while his ex isn’t ready to move on to the afterlife.
A fun read for fans of gay YA as well as mystery and paranormal readers, and a promising opener to a new series.
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