Friday Book Report: County Line by Bill Cameron

Written by Bill Cameron and published by F+W Media, Inc. in 2011, County Line is a riveting tale about secrets, loss, greed, and redemption. 

Skin Kadash is a retired cop just coming back from an extended vacation to learn that the woman he pines for has mysteriously disappeared; there’s a dead man in her apartment bathtub, and he’s got a shadowy stalker that’s stolen his wallet and attacked him.  Searching for answers, Skin heads to San Francisco and teams up with Ruby Jane’s ex to find her.  When they confront her disgruntled brother James; he provides cryptic clues but no answers, and suddenly James is the victim of a hit and run.  Now Skin and Peter (Ruby’s ex) head to Ohio where Ruby Jane grew up to find answers to her whereabouts, but instead they dredge up the past and all the haunting secrets Ruby Jane has tried so desperately to leave behind.

When I read this book, I had no idea there were previous “Skin Kadash” novels already in publication.  This is supposed to be a stand-alone book, but it never felt that way to me.  At certain times throughout, Cameron flashes back to previous happenings in previous novels, but never elaborates on what really happened.  That left me; as a new reader of Skin Kadash feeling confused and disregarded.  For me, the characters were summed up, never fully developed in this book and I never had any understanding of why they are who they are, and what brought them together.  Any summaries provided by Cameron were fleeting and insubstantial, which in turn made me not really care too much about the characters.  The only character that Cameron really developed was Ruby Jane.  We got a clear and concise picture of her troubled life growing up in an abusive home in rural Ohio.  In high school Ruby turns to basketball as an outlet for her abusive home life.  She’s a rising star on the team and with that come complicated friendships and harsh competition.  We understood how she became the person she is today and all the trials and tribulations she went through to get there.  Cameron does a good job illustrating the life Ruby Jane left behind, and the flashes back to Ruby’s past make for excellent (if somewhat dark and haunted) reading.

I will give credit for the ride Cameron takes us on.  Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, he goes out of his way to throw you a curveball that you never saw coming.  Multiple secondary characters play small roles and get you thinking perhaps they have a larger role in all of this, but the twists keep coming in this tale.  After reading the book, I think Cameron spent too much time introducing characters that play no real part, if only to keep you guessing when he could have done a better job of developing the structure of his main characters.   This book travels from present to past and back again, and throughout Cameron weaves a dark tale that is as gripping as it is disturbing.  While ultimately the plot is bleak and depressing, there is the underlying theme that belonging and bonding with someone who cares is essential to all of us.

This book isn’t for the faint at heart.  There’s harsh language to go along with murder, abuse and many other adult situations.  It’s dark.  It’s upsetting at times.  But in the end there is a sense of justice and a conclusion that may not be rewarding, but fitting nonetheless.  These types of books aren’t my normal cup of tea, and for that I can only grade it on the basis that I never felt truly connected to the characters.  I give this book a C because of the lack of character depth, which is too bad because the actual mystery is a good one, but in the end I didn’t feel connected enough with the characters to really care what happens to them.