The Cephalopod Coffeehouse - Dead Connection

Welcome to another edition of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse. The idea is simple: on the last Friday of each month, post about the best book you've finished over the past month while visiting other bloggers doing the same.  In this way, we'll all have the opportunity to share our thoughts and our books with other enthusiastic readers. Please join us:

 

 

This month the book I'll be talking about is Dead Connection 

 

Murray Keifer, who spends far too much time in the cemetery, is a kid with a hard life. His mom is an addict and sometime prostitute, there's a bad cop on the lookout for him, and he can speak to the dead. He doesn't understand his gift but talking to the dead gives him - and them - comfort. He likes to think of himself as a friend to the deceased. When he hears a new voice asking for help, it doesn't take him long to connect the voice to a missing teen names Nikki...

***

 

I pretty much ripped right through this book. Admittedly, I'm a huge fan of stories with characters can talk to the dead, and this reminded me a little of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which I absolutely adored. I won't say it's as good, but I would give Dead Connection a solid 4 stars. I really liked it. A lot! Murray is an immediately sympathetic character due to his situation, and immediately interesting because he talks to dead. Pearl was a real brat in the beginning and we see a lot of her through her father's eyes, but this was especially fun because her father has no illusions about how devious his daughter can be. Gates, the cop investigating the crime, was solid along with the trying-to-get-his-life-together Robert, who may have seen something important, if only he could remember what it is. My only complaint about this book was the end and isn't so much a complaint, as a wish, summed up by this reviewer: "I don't mind the ending being left somewhat open, because the reader knows what will happen next. I wish Price would have taken us all the way there though, to the grave, to the story of this young girl, and to some sort of catharsis for Murray and his special gift." Exactly! Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed every word and I'll be plunking down some green for the next book about Murray.