Hear no evil, speak no evil, but the dead man must see the face of evil

I received a free Kindle copy (sorry, it's no longer free unless you have Amazon Prime) of this and read on my phone.  Not the most ideal reading experience, but slightly better than trying to read from a computer screen for me.  I ended up reading it because I had some time on my hands before my daughter’s softball game began.  So you know what that means… playing on the smart phone!  I decided to read something on the Kindle app so I look smart at least because my go-to games are usually Reversi, Spelling Sea or Army Sniper.  I don’t know if that’s anything to use to profile my personality that would disturb anyone, but I didn’t want to take any chances.  And I’d already checked FB and my email (I’m extremely thorough with my social networking).  But instead of jumping into The Three Musketeers, I went with THE DEAD MAN: FACE OF EVIL by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin.

It starts out with a man, who dotes on his one and only daughter.  They are on a family ski trip.  His daughter, playing in the snow, happens to dig up the body of Matthew Cahill, who was lost and presumed dead in an avalanche three months earlier.  At least, he should have been...

The beginning, though not at all very interesting, was still written well enough to keep my interest to see what would happen next, especially after the little girl dug up the body.  I thought there was going to be some kind of murder mystery to be solved (I had not read any summaries for this story) so when the story jumped back in time to when Matthew was alive and well, that was when it really grabbed my attention because I thought I’d get to see who perhaps murdered him and buried him in the snow and why.  But when it started talking about the avalanche I started to give this the side eye.  Really?  An avalanche?  Come on, there has to be more!

There was.

Matthew Cahill is a simple (but not in the Simple Jack-simple kind of way), hard working, all around good guy.  He lost his wife to cancer and about a year later his coworker, Rachel, wants him to get over it so she can get into his pants.  She even cancels a room for a ski trip together so they have to share the same hotel room!  She’s a real winner!  But she does really care for him as you’ll learn.  They are out skiing and there’s the avalanche.  Rachel is able to get away from it but Matthew is not so lucky.  His body is dug up three months later and taken to the morgue.  It’s there that we discover that Matthew is not dead; he is alive!  When he comes to, all he wants is to just move on with his life, now that he has this second chance.  But there is something different about Matthew and he tries to ignore it.  He’s starting to see some people as they truly are, and it’s really really gross.  I mean, really, really gross.  He doesn’t want anything to do with it (and I don’t blame him because it is really, really gross), but it’s too late and now he’s out to discover what it all means.

There is nothing fancy with the writing.  It’s just plain, straight forward storytelling.  It actually reminded me of a one hour TV show, something like Supernatural, with its pacing and format.  This shouldn’t be a surprise after reading the bios of the authors who have both written for TV shows in the past.  Nothing for Supernatural, so they might want to get on that.  And I did imagine Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean Winchester, as Matthew Cahill, so there you go.

Yes, you, so don’t give me that look.  Just deal with it.

When I rated this on Goodreads, I would have given it 4 stars but I knocked it down.  There was a certain line that annoyed me.  Most readers may not be bothered by it, but it bothered me because it was similar to something that happened in The Difference Engine, which made me stop reading that book.  Overall, I did enjoy it.  It kept my interest and I’m curious enough to want to know what happens next in part 2, Ring Of Knives.  But be warned, there are some really, really gross parts so you might not want to eat while reading.

Or maybe wait 20 minutes after you do.