Scott William CarterReviews

A decent thriller type mystery. I found the backstory about Garrison Gage a tad frustrating -- we are told bits & pieces but apparently everyone in the book knows more than we do, as they can find out by Googling him (as Gage more than once remarks). Unfortunately, I can't find out that way!

New author, new series for me. I feel extremely grateful for a worker at my library to have recommended this author and lucky to have easily found it with the help of my best friend, “Mr. Amazon”. We meet Gage, who is a private investigator and seems to be living under the guise of a tragic hero. You feel sorry for him as he suffers physically and mentally while pursuing the girl's killer but then you have to admire his determination to push on. The tale is believable and so very well-written. Carter has made excellent use of many of the things that make the setting real and easily imagined by the reader with the words he chose to describe this area of Oregan...the late winter followed by the early spring and the rest of the Oregon coast weather throughout the entire story. The book draws the reader in and holds you until the last sentence with its complicated characters and great plot line. I will warn those that are not willing to tolerate writers that make copious use of the "F" word in their work that this book is a cornucopia of them...otherwise a really good book.

This is a very creative story of a truly haunted breadbox, of all things. Highly recommended. Well done.

In some ways it made me think of a marriage between Dean Koontz’s [Odd Thomas] and TV’ series, "Ghost Whisperer” ...and that was in a good way. P.I. Myron Vale seems to have been twice cursed. A lingering injury causes him to not only see and interact with the multitude of ghosts everyone else is unaware of, but he also can’t tell them from the living. I can see this being described as a paranormal romance filled with betrayals and heartache. It is a story about a horrible con man, who through his insidious actions inserted himself into the lives of various people, infecting them with corruption and despair. The saving grace for the tale is that it also contains redemption and hope despite the prevailing atmosphere of sadness. The author struggled a bit in his attempt to bring the reader to the understanding of “how, why where and when” that” Myron Vale becomes the “Ghost Detective.” A well told, ghostly, paranormal tale that pleased the “Ghost Story Junkie”. The very idea and the originality of this story alone earns it 4 stars.

Barnacle's Bluff has many secrets and Garrison Gage seems to be destined to expose them. A lot of bad folks in this episode get their just desserts but Garrison just keeps pushing probing and shooting to an unexpected conclusion. Compelling but often confusing this series continues to sustain my interest.½

His past continues to find Gage as his wife's murderer shows up in Oregon. But brutal cult murders also come to town. Ugly stuff but compelling as he tracks down the cult with some strange help at the end.

After being nearly beaten to death and his wife murdered P.I. Garrison Gage retreats to Barnacle Bluffs in Oregon. Five years later he discovers a body on the beach. He can't help himself he has to investigate her death.
An entertaining murder mystery.

As soon as I read the first Myron Wale Investigation book I received as a preview copy, I knew I had to read the rest. As with the others poor Myron, who has assistance and hindrance from spirits, has a mystery to solve, Short and sweet, a 'back story' for Myron.

This book is action packed! Good fights, good poker games and good drama all wrapped up in a good mystery. The story moves right along and has a good story line. I think a lot of guys would love this book. I gave it 4 stars only because I couldn't relate to all of the masculinity.

Since changing into a real boy, Pino discovers that being human is much more complicated than he observed when he was a wooden puppet. He loves his quiet life with his father Geppetto in the woodshop, but when carves a wooden puppet replica of Geppetto’s dead wife and discovers that he can magically bring her to life, their lives become irrevocably changed. They are forced to move from town to town to avoid the mad crowds of people who demand that they use (or misuse) their powers to fulfill their demands. This bizarre, interesting twist to the familiar Pinocchio fairytale is a quick, interesting read that tweens and adults will definitely enjoy.

Sharyn H. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

Really loved this one. I liked how both characters realize things about each other while hanging out together, and while somehow this was advertized as a romance novel (it isn't quite, unless you count unrequited love as romance?) and hence this wasn't quite what I had expected it to be, I found that I enjoyed the story much more than I probably would have if this *had* been just a simple teenage romance.

I liked it although I really didn't learn too much about Gage. So I am going to purchase another Garrison Gage mystery as I think I like his character.

Garrison Gage doesn't want Zoe to go to Barnacle's Bluff Community College. But Zoe will do what Zoe wants to do, that is until she finds the body of a dead friend in the dorm. Now Garrison becomes convinced that an innocent teenager is going to be tried for murder if he can't find the real murderer. So begins this who-dunit. Follow the twists and turns of the plot in the fast-paced mystery. Another good read from Scott William Carter, I just didn't see the ending coming.

A murder set on the Oregon coast, Angela Wellman has been brutally murdered and tortured by a religious cult. She had come to the coast to consult Garrison Gage about her friend and employer being blackmailed by a religious cult. Garrison Gage investigates the death of his friend while trying to protect his family and friends from a mafia hitman, who murdered his wife, but was released from prison in less than 10 years. This is my 2nd Garrison Gage book and does not disappoint. The characters are well-developed and rich in relationships. The mystery of Angela Wellman is well plotted. The suspense builds as the story progresses. I look forward to reading the next in the series.

Tale of a man who though shot in the head with the bullet staying lodged in the brain survives. But at the price of seeing ghosts. Using alternating chapters, the author has created two storylines progressing concurrently.

Ghost hunting! Myron is such a believable character I ran out and bought another offering from this author.

Quick read. It was somewhat predictable, and I couldn't get a good picture in my head of Gage, but I enjoyed it.

Wow, this is perhaps the worst sequel I have ever read! What the hell happened? I loved Ghost Detective, which was quirky and fun, but most importantly, balanced the detective genre with the supernatural expertly. The Ghost Who Said Goodbye made me wonder if I hadn't accidentally skipped ahead to book ten. Seriously! Suddenly there are major battles between good and evil for human and ghostly souls, Myron suddenly falls in love with a beautiful blonde (natch) who is both spunky and sappy, and generally the whole premise of the first book is left behind in a cloud of the author's dust. Absolute rubbish, quite frankly, filled with cliched dialogue ('cold, so very cold') and alternating chaos and tedium.

My ambivalence about this book flows strong and deep. I couldn't hate it; there was some nice writing here:

"It's my last dying wish. It'd make me happy." Garrison stared at her, bemused at her chutzpah.
"I thought you were going to use that line on Zoe?"
"Oh, I will. But it's the kind of line I plan to get plenty of mileage out of."

"…His brown tweed suit fit so loosely Gage figured he'd slip out of it if he stood too fast."

"He loaded up his Beretta and tucked it inside his jacket, the weight of it like a rock against his heart."

There was also some not-so-nice writing. There were some silly situations, and some exasperating ones, and such unfortunate phrasings as "the soft underbelly of her breasts". Can breasts have an underbelly?

I did not like any of the characters. There is a new owner of the local newspaper: "There were two ad managers and a part-time secretary that came with this place, but I wanted to do things myself for a while so I knew the business inside and out." So she fired the whole staff? I wanted her to be the next murder victim.

The murder victim herself is described as a feckless little thing, who up till the point when she crosses paths with a killer was drifting along with almost no money yet stops to get a tattoo, then went looking for dolphins where dolphins don't swim. She didn't deserve to be murdered – but she didn't exactly deserve to not be murdered, if you see what I mean. And for me she didn't earn the level of fierce post-mortem protectiveness that infects our sleuth.

And our hero Garrison? The book description refers to him as a curmudgeon, and that works. Mushy on the inside, crusty on the outside. He fled from New York after his wife was murdered and he was pretty thoroughly beaten, and he has spent the years between then and now concentrating on being alone and doing crossword puzzles. However, upon finding the body of the feckless little thing mentioned above, he comes out of his shell with a vengeance, which happens to coincide nicely with the recent arrival of above-mentioned newspaper owner. I don't know; he puzzled me. We are told that back in New York he was, shall we say, rather attached to his wife's grave – but then he picked up and moved three thousand miles away from it. He was a pretty good detective back in the day – but here the bad guys seem to get the drop on him in every other chapter.

Having taken upon himself the task of identifying the dead girl and finding her killer, he gets himself into all kinds of adventures, and then … the whole thing turns on a stray piece of litter which miraculously never blew away or got picked up, and which could not be traced to anyone but that one specific person. This struck me as so ridiculous that any possibility of reading more in the series went out the window.

Fun typo (I'm going to start collecting these): "Rock Eyed Angles".

And another: "Sue must have seen the seriousness in his yes".

A decent thriller type mystery. I found the backstory about Garrison Gage a tad frustrating -- we are told bits & pieces but apparently everyone in the book knows more than we do, as they can find out by Googling him (as Gage more than once remarks). Unfortunately, I can't find out that way!

Oh wow, some books are so brilliant that they seem tailor-made. Thank you, Scott William Carter! Of course, having a long-standing crush on Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) might have been the reason why I chose and fell in love with Myron Vale, but for the brilliant comic writing, clever (non-corporeal) world-building and moments of pure heart-wrenching emotion, all praise is due to the author.

Like that annoying kid in the film, Portland detective Myron Vale 'sees dead people'. Since surviving a shot to the head, with the bullet still lodged in his brain, Myron has been able to communicate with the dead, and he's earned himself a bit of a reputation on the 'other side' as the ghost detective - which comes in handy, because he can't return to his old job. Newly established as a private detective, one of Myron's first clients is Karen Thorne, a voluptuous blonde ghost who wants him to find out who fixed the brakes on her car and killed her. Was it her shady husband, Tony Neumann? While trying to find the answers to Karen's death, Myron struggles to solve the one great mystery of his own life - why his eccentric artist wife Billie is also haunting him.

Just a fast, funny read, with shades of Chandler, Stout, DOA and The Sixth Sense (but in a good way) - and yes, a worthy follow-up to Randall and Hopkirk! Some scenes had me cackling to myself on public transport - always a good sign - but Myron's parents and the young son of his friend nearly reduced me to tears. Powerful stuff for a quirky 'light read'! Definitely recommended, and I will be downloading book two immediately.

A good practice run to try out the character and locale.½

Still reeling from his wife's death, Garrison Gage has retreated to the Oregon Coast to live out his solitary life doing crossword puzzles. Finding a dead teenager in the surf, creates the stimulus for him to begin his way back from the mental abyss he has created. Like all small towns, Barnacle Bay has its secrets and Gage unearths many as he works to resolve the identity and fate of the murdered teenager. Good read, some editorial quibbles not withstanding, with interesting characters, a picturesque locale and a frantic but valid conclusion. A short series so far but hopefully it will continue.

Very good read.

Great story. Believable characters. Exciting ending.