Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Book review: Secondhand Sight by Rocky Leonard



What would you do if a piece of clothing from a thrift shop opened up a channel of communications to the spirit world? That is the question put to Dan Harper, a mild mannered computer programmer from Atlanta. When he buys a used necktie to replace his own stained one, Dan begins seeing visions of grisly murder scenes. Suddenly he knows things about a sadistic killer that he could not possibly know.


Is Dan being used by the ghosts of the victims to exact their vengeance or is he the psychotic killer himself? As Dan tries to determine the answer, he attracts the attention of the police and begins a cat-and-mouse game in which he has to find a way to stay out jail long enough to determine what is really going on before the death toll grows.

Rocky Leonard, a native of Savannah and current Atlantan has done it again. “Secondhand Sights,” his second novel, much surpasses his debut effort, “Coastal Empire.” The book is fast paced and well written with a story line that leaves the reader wanting more.

Dan’s supernatural experiences force him to confront an evil that seems all too real. The brutal crimes could almost be plucked from actual newspaper accounts of senseless killings, but the twist comes when the unseen spirits tied to those crimes begin confronting Dan. The reader is forced to wonder whether spirits still lurk in the houses of the dead and whether they might, at times, steer the living in a direction that helps them find justice and revenge.

Leonard’s background as an Examiner.com writer in which he often investigated supernatural claims and accounts of near death experiences is evident in this well-spun tale. In a world where the spiritual is often not considered because it cannot be seen and touched, communication by a dead murder victim would make most of us doubt our sanity. Leonard puts the reader in Dan’s shoes as his ordered, normal view of the world is shattered and he fights to determine what is real and what isn’t.

You may have read murder mysteries and detective thrillers before, but you haven’t read one like this one.

“Secondhand Sight” is available as an ebook and paperback. It can be purchased on Amazon.com and GoodReads.com.

 Full disclosure:  I served as a proofreader for Leonard.

2 comments:

Rocky Leonard said...

You helped make my novel much better than it was, David. Your suggestions were greatly appreciated. I'm looking forward to your help with my next novel--I wrote a nonfiction book harking back to the Examiner arguments, and now that it's in the hopper, I'm on the sequel to Coastal Empire!

Rocky Leonard said...

Thanks, David! You helped make Secondhand Sight a much better book.