THE SLEEPING AND THE DEAD by Jeff Crook

Jackie Lyons, a former vice detective with the Memphis Police Department, is trying to put her life back together. Her husband has served her with divorce papers, she's broke, and her apartment has just gone up in flames. But a failed marriage, unemployment, and an incinerated home aren’t her only problems: she also sees ghosts.

Since Jackie left her job with the MPD, she’s been making ends meet by photographing crime scenes for her old friends on the force, and for the occasional collector. When she’s called to the murder scene of the famed Memphis Playhouse Killer's latest victim, she starts seeing crime scenes from a different perspective— her new camera captures spectral images. As her camera brings her ghostly visitors into sharper relief, it also points her toward clues the ex-detective in her won’t let go: Did the man she just started dating kill his wife? Is the Playhouse Killer someone in her inner circle?  

As Jackie works to separate natural from supernatural, friend from foe, and light from dark, the spirit world and her own difficult past become the only things she can depend on to solve the case.

Lets start this off by saying, it started off pretty slow, but later on in the book it got pretty interesting. So much so that I finished it! But let me tell you, up until a bit past halfway, I still couldn't decide if I liked it or not, or even really wanted to continue.

Lets start with Jackie. As a character, she is great. She is quick witted, funny and really bold in her decisions and actions which makes her easy to read through and to understand. As a character she adds a lot of comedic relief in the situations that were either awkward, dark, or intense which made things less harsh and eerie.

Besides that, I felt like all the other characters didn't matter...they didn't really play into the plot, they didn't add anything special and they didn't subtract from the story or the plot in any way. They were simply interactions for Jackie to experience but weren't necessarily needed for the story at all. As such, it made the story a bit dull. she had no real relationships with anyone, no one to really talk to on a personal or intimate basis, so all you had to go off of was her and the trailing of her heroin and crack deprived mind.

Anything that you found out in the story was simply due to Jackie figuring it out, but not even that....you don't get to figure it out with her. So things just get stated, you don't get to see inside her working mind and dig with her and connect the dots with her. Instead, it was literally like watching a black and white film...you see things happening but have no idea the intentions or the emotions or understanding behind the way things are done...instead you figure it out after it's blatantly shown to you. So while you read, once Jackie figures it out you as the reader only figure it out when she tells someone else in the story. Not while she is in the moment and doing it all....it felt really impersonal and didn't allow much of a connection between me and the character.

One of the driving forces in the plot line, or should be, is the fact that Jackie can see ghosts.....but it doesn't even drive the story.. She doesn't interact with them, she doesn't use them, she literally just ignores them. At times in the story you'll be reading and Jackie will take notice of a ghost....and then the story continues as if it never happened. So what is the point in her being able to see ghosts? Really nothing...It literally doesn't even matter because it doesn't progress the story line....

So overall the book itself got better, but it was still relatively bland for me.

I was just not having a good day choosing books at the store when I bought this with the Sword of Fire and Sea....

How disappointing!!

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