When Tori wakes up on a cruise ship she never booked, she needs help finding out what happened. Enter Seamus, Dead Detective. Winner of EPIC's best mystery of 2012.
Tori Van Camp vividly recalls being murdered in her cozy little apartment in Grand Rapids, MI. How, then, did she end up on a cruise ship?
The answers she gets are startling, but Tori wants to know even more. She wants to know exactly what happened back in Grand Rapids. Enlisting the help of the taciturn Seamus, she embarks on a journey like nothing she ever imagined: a trip that takes her back to see if someone in her circle of friends, co-workers, and acquaintances might be capable of murder. She soon learns that not only is someone she knows a killer, that person is determined to stop anyone from finding out what's going on.
Excerpt
Does dreaming you are dead mean that you really die? The question came to Tori slowly as she stirred from oblivious sleep, stretching her feet between the smooth sheets, twisting her hips to a more comfortable position, and finally opening her eyes enough to see that it was day. “Wake up, Van Camp,” she mumbled, but her dread did not dissipate as nightmares do when faced with sunlight.
As full memory returned, Tori’s eyes opened fully. She clutched her chest, dreading the warm, sticky blood certain to be there. A man had aimed a pistol directly at her. A twitch of his hand, an odd thumping noise, and after that, she recalled nothing.
The hand at her chest felt nothing unusual. There was no blood, and she was perfectly whole. Still, the image of death did not recede. The memory became more vivid, not less, the feeling that it had really happened more intense. Tori could almost hear the doorbell, her footsteps as she went to answer it, the few words spoken, and the silenced gunshot.
It was not that she felt dead, and a glance at a mirror to her right revealed that she did not look dead, either. Was her impression of death a dream? It had to be, and yet, it was so clear.
Three crisp knocks on the door startled her out of her reverie. On the other side of the door was a petite blond woman with darkly tanned skin and more makeup than a CNN anchor. “Ms. Van Camp? I’m Cinda, your hostess. How was your rest?” The words came in the professionally caring tone that people such as nurses and waitresses seem required under oath to adopt.
“Um, fine,” Tori replied uncertainly.
“Super!” Cinda exclaimed, more excited by the reply than was necessary. “Rest is the best thing.”
Confused by the banal opening remarks, Tori tried to ignore the woman’s perfume and over-the-top cheeriness. “I have some questions.”
“Of course you do.” Cinda tilted her head coquettishly. She was definitely of the perky persuasion, and while the ability to be upbeat at all times might be admirable, Tori suspected it often came from a superficial understanding of circumstances.
“Okay, let’s see. Your questions will be answered at…” she held a clipboard and, pulling a pencil with an abrupt rip from a little Velcro pad that secured it, used its point to make her way down a sheet of names. “…ten this morning, Office 112 D, if that’s convenient for you.” The reference to Tori’s convenience must have been pure diplomacy, since she did not wait for a reply. “Until then, you’re free to explore, okay? Breakfast is here on Deck E, and the fitness center on D is open all the time. You might get a massage, take a sauna, or visit the gym.”
“But I don’t understand what’s happened.”
“That’s why you’re meeting Nancy at ten. Until then, enjoy the facilities.”
Professional Reviews
New York Journal of Books review
1.It’s a brave or foolhardy writer who kills the main character in the very first page of their book, believing the reader will continue with the rest of the story rather than simply give up. Few writers manage it. Alice Sebold mastered it in The Lovely Bones. Thankfully, Peg Herring shows the same proficiency in this, her first in a series of books featuring the bizarre but totally original Dead Detective Agency and its many wacky members.
Young secretary Tori Van Camp wakes one morning on a luxurious ocean liner where she is offered whatever a person might desire: food, clothes, recreation, and the companionship of congenial people. But Tori has little or no memory of booking a cruise. What she does have is a vivid recollection of being shot point blank in the chest by an unknown assailant.
With the help of the stunningly handsome Mike and the unnervingly serene Nancy, Tori soon learns the purpose of her voyage on board the luxury liner. Still, she is haunted by the image of the gun, the crack of the shot, and the malevolent face of the shooter. Who wanted her dead, and why?
Determined to find out, Tori enlists the help of Seamus, an eccentric but shrewd detective (that’s right, Seamus the Shamus). Together they embark on an investigation unlike anything Tori ever thought possible. Death is all around— literally—and the future is uncertain, and if Tori does not act quickly, two people she cares about are prime candidates for murder. Unfortunately for Tori, she just can’t get up and leave her new abode to go gallivanting after murderers. That’s Seamus’s job. Besides, only the big man behind the desk, Gabriel, can give the okay. Will he give the okay? Will Tori regret ever asking his permission, to go back to that bloody scene? Will Seamus manage to bring closure to this lost and troubled soul?
The Dead Detective Agency combines belief in the afterlife with the paradoxical uncertainty of survival in the present, and is full of wickedly dark humor combined with regular laugh-out-loud moments.
Ms. Herring’s story-telling ability to keep all the plates spinning effortlessly is genuinely impressive. Masterfully, she takes your conscious mind out of your own world and guides you into the atmospheric surrealism of The Dead Detective Agency, smoothly and expertly, with page-turning ease. The story and writing proceed at a furious, breathtaking pace, and when we finally come to the end of our voyage, it’s with deep regret, as if saying bon voyage to a dear friend we have known and loved for years.
Thankfully, Seamus will be back. The follow-up, Dead for the Money, will be harboring to a bookstore very soon. The Dead Detective Agency looks set to be with us for a very long time indeed. Roll on the sequel.
Sam Millar
Geoff Nelder Review
What a splendid book title!
The Dead Detective Agency by Peg Herring
Reviewed by Geoff Nelder
Published by LL-Publications April 2011
ISBN: 978-1905091706
A vibrant easy-going twenty-five-year-old woman, Tori, with not a single enemy in this world, is shot dead in her apartment for no apparent reason. The apparent lack of motive narks her so much she refuses to go to Heaven. Instead, she finds herself in a kind of Paradise cruise ship among others in limbo. She is being coached to accept her lot but when she learns there is an elite able to cross back she argues with the high and mighty and wins.
As a consequence we have a unique novel, in both senses of the word, where there are not only two detectives trying to solve a puzzling murder, but one of them is dead. In fact Tori is with her mentor dead detective, Seamus. The two demised sleuths can only exist back on their former world by inhabiting the living, sometimes the same one. They can jump between people but only in extreme circumstances may they make their presence felt. Readers are used to following a story through the eyes of a protagonist. However, in this tale, they are engaging the action through the eyes of a ‘ghost’ through their inhabited live person! And yet you don’t get lost. The narrative is an easy read belying the complexity of the issues.
There are light moments. For example when alive Tori tried to match-make two of her colleagues. Carmon lacks confidence and though she is enamoured with Abe, needed a shove. That came from Tori, finally, after she died. Brilliant.
There is sadness here too. Tori’s death was a tragic error, as her investigation uncovers. So much life for her that she really anticipated living, cruelly robbed. At least she is assured of an even better after-life.
Because the two dead detectives can switch hosts if in sufficient close proximity, and with the story style carrying a kind of hard-boiled gumshoe feel, this novel could rightly be called Sam Spade meets Quantum Leap. The action in the book is contemporary even though the feel is of an earlier era. The cover art, by Helen E.H. Madden, reinforces the 30s style beautifully with the depict ion of Tori – her wistfulness as a limbo cruiseship passenger.
I remain a pecuniary ignoramus about how an investment bank works but in one respect I am at least up to conversationalist level. Thanks to Peg Herring, I am now informed on ‘selling away’, the underhand practise of cheating both the firm and client to the profit of a swindler. It is this practice that ultimately led to Tori’s death, and that of others in this action novel. In an interesting way this is Financial Swindling for Dummies. Thanks!
On another level I felt Tori and Seamus could have treated the reader to a more exciting time in their voyeuristic travelling inside other people. I ask myself: would I resist the temptation to learn more about women by being inside the head of one – seeing through her eyes and experiencing all her senses? No, I’d go all the way and I feel a lack of the sexual frisson and intellectual gender differences that could have been explored.
Even so, there is much novelty here to commend to the reader. Seamus, as an experienced dead detective, leaps from a man to a rat, then to a dog. Wow. Cross-species sensory travelling and Herring doesn’t disappoint. Now I know why some dogs bark all the time – they are possessed!
A line I’m sure many of us on Earth can relate to is when the policeman ‘used his remote as a weapon against commercials’. I wish I’d written that.
Overall, in spite of Earthly tragedies, we have the joyful theme that all good people make it to ‘Heaven’, whatever that is. This limbo novel has much to recommend it.
Buried Under Books
This is a murder mystery unlike any other, with a premise so twisty,
so surprising, so excellent, you’re bound to read it fast and beg for
the next installment. I wish I could tell you how the story begins,
but that would constitute a spoiler, so I won’t. Suffice it to say
that when murder wipes out several staff members of PLK Investments,
Grand Rapids police detectives Madison and DeMestrie need all the help
they can get to first, discover the reason for the murders, and two,
find the guilty party.
The reader is in for a great deal of woo woo because a lot of that
help comes from another detective, one who has been dead for forty
years. Even if you don’t like ghost stories, (I do) this one is sure
to capture your imagination. And that’s just one of the great things
about this novel. Author Peg Herring‘s concept of what happens after
death is certainly original. I recommend The Dead Detective Agency if
you’re looking for a story out of the ordinary.
The Reed’s faith, a mystery to some, will be tested like never before. Will it hold? Mark’s love for his wife and their intimate romance is shattered by Brandy, a barmaid.
