Book Review: Secondhand Sight by Rocky Leonard

Secondhand Sight

by Rocky Leonard

Publisher: Each Voice Publishing

Published: Aug. 31, 2012

ASIN: B0094XDVNW

Amazon Synopsis:

Secondhand Sight won the 2013 Readers' Favorite International Book Awards gold medal for Fiction/Horror.

Dan Harper is just an ordinary guy, having an ordinary day...until he ruins his tie during lunch. When he visits a thrift store near his office for an inexpensive replacement, merely touching a secondhand tie triggers a flood of gruesome images only he can see. Are they hallucinations, or suppressed memories?

Dan desperately wants these visions to be nothing more than a product of his imagination, but soon enough, he discovers real crime scenes and murder victims. Dan 

can no longer ignore the unseen powers forcing him to confront the demons of his past. Dark forces prod him to seek the identity of the faceless murderer haunting his dreams.

Dan's worst fear is the suspicion he'll eventually confront the face of this brutal killer in last place he wants to look - the mirror.

This suspense thriller is a mix of police procedural with a paranormal twist.

Book Links

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My Thoughts:

Confirmed atheist Dan Harper's life is moving along just the way he wants. He likes his job; he's happily married and he and his wife Beth have a child on the way. But life goes crazy that day that he walks into the thrift store to buy a tie to replace the one he stained at lunch.

Once Dan put the tie on, he looks at himself in the mirror and sees himself covered in blood. Then he looks down at his hands and they are covered in blood. Just as suddenly the hallucination is over. Every time he touches the tie he has a vision of himself committing some kind of gruesome act of murder. Then the nightmares start.

Dan is lead by these nightmares to find the body of a murder victim and begins to believe that he is being contacted by the spirit of the dead man to help solve his murder, one of a a series of murders committed by the same man.

Secondhand Sight is a fast-moving thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat as you go with Dan to stay one step ahead of the killer to prevent the next murder. The characters are well developed. I appreciated the devotion that Dan and Beth have to one another. The distaste that Detective Wassner has for psychics lends an air of reality to the story.

While I found this story very interesting, I do have to say that it is only plausible if you believe that communication with the dead is possible. Dan's brother Kevin, also an atheist had a near-death experience and saw his dead father. When he returned, he came back a changed man saying that he'd been to heaven and though he hadn't seen God, he'd seen the light that came from God and been told he wasn't worthy yet to meet Jesus.

I categorized Secondhand Sight as a paranormal fantasy thriller and gave it 3 stars out of 5.

Thank you to the author who provided a copy of the book in exchange for an fair and honest review. A positive opinion was not required. All thoughts are my own.

About the Author:

John L. Leonard was born in Savannah, Georgia and graduated from Savannah Christian School. He holds a BBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Georgia and worked as a computer programmer for more than twenty years before becoming a writer.

John writes detective novels under the pen name Rocky Leonard. His first detective thriller was published in 2012.

John has spent most of his adult life in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. His writing has also been influenced by shorter stints working as a bartender, real estate investor and landlord.

He has been married to wife Lisa for twenty-one years and is the proud father of two and grandfather of three, as well as pack leader for several wonderful dogs and a hostile Maine Coon cat.

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This review was published on Author Alliance Network www.authoralliance.net