The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson

Fascinated by forensics, seventeen-year-old Cameryn Mahoney persuades her father, the county coroner in sleepy Silverton, CO, to take her on as his assistant. But she never expects her first case to involve the death of a friend! Rachel Geller, a beautiful young waitress, is found strangled in a field with a Christopher medal around her neck—clearly marking her as the fourth victim of a serial killer. Cameryn is determined to help find Rachel’s killer, and attending the autopsy gives her the first clue. But as she follows her instincts and gets closer to the killer, Cameryn suddenly finds herself on the verge of becoming his fifth victim!

My Thoughts:
It was your average murder-mystery, detective story. In general, I like this kind of story but this one didn't quite cut it. First of all, the writing style kept pulling me out of the story. This needed to be edited a few more times. There was a lot of repeated phrasing and regurgitated ideas. This book could have been half as long as it was.

Ok, so the characters: Cameryn was a decent protagonist. She wasn't annoying. I appreciated her intelligence. But, then she did idiotic stuff, like invite herself (her 17-year-old, girl-self) into a grown man's hotel room. She was usually smart so what was she thinking? Oi.

I liked Adam and Lyric. They were fun to read even if they were a bit ridiculous. Deputy Crowley weirded me out a bit. But that may have been purposeful. 

And then there was the stupidity of a police coroner "hiring" his teenaged, high-school-attending-daughter to be his assistant. Would a bunch of cops really be ok with a girl being pulled out of school to go help out at crime scenes? Would anyone? That's just... dumb. And after only helping her father do the coroner thing one time, our protagonist is suddenly in great demand and needed for every case. Highly logical, yes.

The sciencey explanation stuff was really interesting. I got an education. And it's funny because when I found this book most of the reviews just said something about how accurate the forensics stuff was. Which is nice. I appreciate accuracy. But this is a novel. I really just wanted better writing. Good writing plus an interesting story plus scientific accuracy could make a really great book. This was a bit lacking.

I just--I don't have much to say about this. Could have been cool. Wasn't. That's all.