My Book Review: Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave

My Review and Thoughts:

I think the one real big issue I had with this book is your main character. Ex-detective now, Private Investigator Theodore Tate is absolutely, unequivocally depressing. I'm not talking about sad. I mean in agony, bleeding from every orifice the idea of depression, and his past, his present and the bleak future are all absolutely mind-numbing to the point it's too much to care.

I like my detectives and private investigators with a problem on their shoulders, with a past or with something causing them to be the way they are, but this poor sap is like staying the night at the concentration camp bed-and-breakfast with your roommate being Dr. Joseph Mengele, swapping bedside stories.

Tate is one of the worst characters that I I've have ever had to Indore. Getting through the story, it was good, the plot was awesome, but the character was so horrible that it just made you want to pluck your eyes out or eat a bullet. I mean the ordeal he's goes through, his past weighing on him, the present actions controlling him and periodically making stupid choices causing great harm, or leading him down a path of destruction, is displayed brilliantly through the storytelling. This book is filled with massive mystery. It is a first-hand narrative through your main characters depressing mind, about his past, his presence and everything he thinks the future holds, which is absolutely nothing. I like anti-heroes. I like vigilante justice seeking people. I like detectives or private eyes in stories that go over the bounds, and step on people's toes to get the job done, but Tate is like a one-man army with stupid choices that lead him down deeper and darker realities, that totally cloud any judgment of right and wrong, or trying to put what's right, what's wrong in a place that makes sense.

If you get over this poor depressing sap of a character, and follow along with the plot, the narrative is very deep, very dark, very mysterious, very graphic, and leads you down a path of a murder mystery that plays out morbidly.

The final conclusion couldn't get there fast enough. Because the book was to draining and lacked any care for the main character. The main character was an unlikable a-hole.

I love the writing style. I love the unrelenting mystery, but ultimately was a little too much character development. Most stories you complain there's not enough character development. In this book there is way too much, because the main character just gets on your nerves.

Solid style of writing. Great mystery. Dark and morbid. The character is a little too much. In the end it was an okay read. I still enjoyed it for what it was, but would not return to it again, and probably would not move on with this character in a series. This is a reoccurring character. I just don't think I could read another book with his brain narrating.

My Rating: 3 out of 5