Sean Campbell

Casting Call For Dead on Demand

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Before I get any further into this story, I thought I would put out a list (I was going to say short list, but that would be a huge lie) of all the characters who seem to be somehow tied together in this little London town because of Edwin’s urge to off his wife. So here goes:

 

Edwin: master plotter (Can we just call him Ed, already? Thanks!)

Eleanor: unfortunate wife to Ed, who bit the dust fairly early

Drew: Ed and Eleanor’s son who passed away

Chelsea: The daughter who is now motherless

Betty: Ed’s secretary

Derek Wood: Newspaper owner, and former employer of Ed, until he let him go

Caroline Flack: Ed’s newly hired divorce attorney (talk about a bad day; divorce papers, then getting canned)

Wood’s personal assistant: so-far unnamed, but the way this story is going, likely to be the plotter of someone else’s demise or a poor sap to get offed pretty soon

Mark: Ed’s brother-in-law, Eleanor’s brother

Palmer: another employee of the paper, in the advertising department (so-far unimportant, but why else did the authors’ give him a name?)

Jeremy Kyle: television news reporter, and by Ed’s comments, Eleanor’s boyfriend?

Yosef Gershwin: father to a son with tay-sachs disease, who vows he will not let him suffer

son: not yet named, but obviously on the wrong end of his father’s plot to “not let him suffer”

Vanhi: prostitute in London, and killer of Eleanor

Jaison: Vanhi’s boyfriend

Mr. Pockmarked-Face: dweller in Vanhi’s nightmares, she is determined to get rid of him for good (which is how Eleanor ended up dead, and Ed finds himself in quite the pickle)

David Morton: Detective Chief Inspector, trying to solve one murder, likely to have the bodies piling up on his desk fairly quickly as things seem to be getting out of hand

David’s technician: another unnamed, but who knows, he may have a whole chapter to himself in a few pages, so I am mentioning him

Dr. Jensen: A psychologist who suspects everyone, he is right to think Ed has something to hide from studying his phone conversations and interviews

Peter K. Sudgen (Jones): Racist Bigot Idiot (my words, not the authors’) who is determined to get rid of his foreign neighbors (His name was Sudgen-Jones for a minute in the book, then it disappeared. Honestly, I am not lying)

Mrs. Sudgen: apparent wimp of a woman and enabler of her Racist Bigot Idiot husband

Barry Chambers: lovelorn fool who is going to propose to Jessica, if she ever shows up for their dinner reservation

Jessica: Dumper of Barry by the next weekend, and likely to be on the receiving end of someone’s poorly-planned execution plot

 

So there you have it, less than halfway done with this story and it has more characters then a quiet game of “Guess Who?”

 

I will have this book finished before the weekend is out. I have to say, I am rather curious now how Ed is going to get himself out of this mess (or try to, I should say) but it is still a bit of a difficult read.

Another New Character in Dead On Demand

AngelaLeave a comment

I’ll get to that person in a minute. I didn’t get a lot read last night, I spent about 6 hours working on z-scores, t test, and null hypothesis.

So, Where was I? David Morton (police) had his technician sifting through all of the CCTV (closed circuit tvs) from the park where Eleanor was killed. He saw her going in, passing some cameras, and did notice that while she had a key around her neck while jogging, they did not find it on or near her body.

Edwin still has messages pouring in concerning his “ad” he placed, and he starts thinking that he is just going to find someone to take care of Vandi’s problem for him, he will completely screw that person, and he will technically not physically kill anyone (sounds to me like he has his hand in a whole lot of deaths though!)

And now we meet Barry Chambers. Was he mentioned already? I honestly can’t remember, and if he was I lost him somewhere in the crowd of characters in this story. So Barry is sitting in a restaurant, 3 hours alone, waiting for his girlfriend Jessica to show up. With a ring in his pocket, anxious to propose. She never does show up. By the next weekend he finds out why. She says they just aren’t working, and can they at least be friends? This is the last we hear about these two for the moment, but I have a strong suspicion that Barry is going to be looking for a way to get rid of Jessica.

Edwin finally gets called in to ID the body of Eleanor, unknowingly being videotaped by the departments top psychologist. Everything he has said on the phone has been taped as well. The psychologist is already seeing some things that do not add up. Cry and sob all he wants, I don’t think he is going to get away with this for too long.

I am only on page 58 of over 260, and I cannot even guess how many more people are going to get tangled up into this web. I got a good jump on my statistics homework, I think, so I should be able to get through a good number of pages, and likely a few more bodies, in the next day.

Have a happy Sunday, with sunshine and a great story to read!

Dead on Demand-With Some New Characters

AngelaLeave a comment

Image

Of Course.

 

I think since I haven’t been a bit confused enough (no, that does not make sense, but it makes my point exactly), Mr. Campbell x 2 are going to throw in some more characters. So, into the character pool we dive, and boy is it getting crowded in here!

 

Venhi does the deed, and Eleanor is no more; just a Jane Bloggs (the British version of America’s Jane Doe) on a slab in the morgue, waiting for someone to figure out who she is. The clever assistant technician doing the autopsy catches the hole in her neck from the needle rather quickly.

 

Edwin returns home, waiting for the phone to ring; some type of news that Eleanor is eliminated.

 

Into the story comes David Morton; Detective Chief Inspector. We also meet Peter K. Sugden-Jones, so far not connected to anyone else in this story. Seems to be well-to-do, and have a bit of a snobbish attitude to go right along with it. We learn he trades in the market, but that’s about all we know about him so far.

 

And we see Chelsea, waiting for her mum to pick her up, but obviously she is going to be a bit late since she’s in the morgue, waiting for someone to ID her. Edwin eventually gets a call, and can barely contain his glee as he goes to pick up his daughter. He does everything necessary to look like the concerned husband; sends messages, leaves voicemails, calls friends. He figures he covered his bases, and once Chelsea goes to sleep, he sends Vanhi a message, asking if it is OK if he takes care of his end of the deal in a couple weeks.

 

Now we get to enter Mr. Peter Sugden’s home, where his wife is waiting for him with dinner ready. (I am not the one who made the huge typo error here, I went back and looked and a few pages ago, he was Mr. Sugden-Jones, now it is Mr. Sugden and Mrs. Sugden. hmmm). Mrs. S lets him know that she saw all 3 of the new neighbors, and he is not going to be happy. Why won’t he be happy, you ask? Because they are foreigners. And yes, he is that bigoted, racist, idiot neighbor that everyone seems to get to experience one of in their lifetime, right? (Hopefully only 1).

 

And Mr. David Morton (remember, the Detective Chief Inspector?) is over at the park where Eleanor was found, looking for anything and everything that could help him solve this case.

Dead on Demand – and on we go……

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We catch up with Edwin on a flight to Vancouver, where his job prospect in Human Resources is located.

It hops right back to Vanhi, in the middle of a nightmare, seeing nothing but a pockmarked-faced man who has her bound and gagged. Waking up, and finding no cocaine to ease her nerves, she decides to get on her darknet account and find an anonymous dealer. Of course, she finds Edwin’s posting about needing a problem taken care of. Vanhi decides she has a problem that needs to be taken care of as well; Mr. Pockmarked-face. She quickly replies with her own message.

And we are back again to Edwin, who nails his interview for the HR position, and returns home to see his computer flashing with a received message.

OK, now here is something that really bugs me when I am reading. When something seems to just fall out of the sky and right into the story. Like facts, or information. Here is the next part I read, word-for-word.

‘Seems like a fair swap. What is your problem?’ he read.

Did she understand what she was proposing? Was she an undercover cop? Did it make a difference even if she was? He was, after all, anonymous (Campbell & Campbell, page 30).

How does he know that the person replying is a woman? (I re-read this section several times thinking I had to have missed something where she identified herself to him as a woman. Nope). Did she sign her name? Attach a picture of herself? This is the kind of thing that bugs me. I am used to the grammatical errors that seem to be in every single book I pick up lately (Do we not hire editors anymore people?) but random stuff like this is just ridiculous.

…….OK. Putting my soap box away…….

Back and forth Edwin and Vanhi continue to message. It seems like they can both close on this deal. Vanhi has a picture of Eleanor and her morning jogging schedule. Edwin decides to hang out in Vancouver for a while longer; not only for an alibi, but also because he needs to start getting used to his future home.

Vanhi preps a hypodermic with cocaine and ethanol, enough to get the job done. She starts staking out Eleanor’s morning jogging path, vowing to herself to take care of the problem the first clear chance she gets. She has a week to get it done and over with.

Dead On Demand-Daniel Campbell & Sean Campbell

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I hope the inside lives up to the cover!
I hope the inside lives up to the cover!

I am really hoping that the best thing about this story is not the title. I have to say I have only read the first chapter, but all through that first chapter I kept asking myself “Do I really want to keep reading this?”

Why was I thinking this? Mainly because this story does one thing I do not like in the books I read: it introduces a whole town’s worth of characters and all the twisted ways they may or may not be linked together. Most books take a while to do this, but I think this book did it all in the first chapter. At least I hope they did it all in the first chapter, because if the next one or two chapters do this, it will be the second book in my lifetime that I could not finish. It reminds me of reading “The Casual Vacancy” by J.K. Rowling. The only book I read from front to back and had no idea what I had just read when I finished it. (Honestly, I would sell that book at a yard sale or donate it to my local library but I would not want to be responsible for someone else reading that book).

So in chapter one, we meet Edwin, over-worker to avoid his wife, Eleanor. Drew, their son that died, and Chelsea, their daughter that lived. Betty, who is Edwin’s secretary. Derek Wood, the owner of the newspaper that Edwin works for. Wood’s personal assistant, so-far unnamed. Palmer, advertising employee for the paper. Mark, Edwin’s brother-in-law. Caroline Flack, Edwin’s just obtained divorce attorney. Jeremy Kyle, news reporter and likely Eleanor’s new boyfriend.

Now, they did not give a huge backstory for all of the characters I just mentioned (just most), but they were all mentioned; in the first chapter. 16 pages.

Now the first sentence of chapter two, and when I stopped reading this morning? “When his first son was born, Yosef Gershwin had paced back and forth frantically.” (page 17).

Having a sneaking suspicion I was about to learn all about Yosef, his son, and his extended family, I had to stop reading. I will pick it back up; but if too many more characters get added to this story, it is going back on the bookshelf, gathering dust, never to be looked at again.

The meaning of this story? Edwin is online, looking for someone to take care of a problem he has. Yep; that problem.