Trouble at Camp Still Waters by Eddie Generous - Monsters and Serial Killers Oh My!
There is a lot going on in Trouble at Camp Still Waters by Eddie Generous. Ordinarily a book that has a lot going on is something I’m okay with but this took me completely by surprise, I like to go into books totally blind. I don’t read reviews other than to see if someone liked or didn’t like a book and I rarely read the back of the book. I like to feel the story grow as I read it, not wait for the stuff I read on the jacket to start happening.
The first chapter of Trouble at Camp Still Waters gives the impression that this is going to be a book about a serial killer. I don’t read a ton of stuff about serial killers so I thought this would be a good change of pace for me. Then there was a part about a lake and some seismic activity. I assumed this would just add another wrinkle to the serial killer story. Then monsters came out from under the lake. I’m not saying there was too much going on in this book, but there was close to too much going on.
It felt as though I was reading two books at once. The first, a compelling serial killer story about a killer who successfully breaks out of prison and continues his blood thirsty rampage. And an equally compelling monster story about a host of larger than life monsters that only reveal themselves after an earthquake that opens a fault crack underneath a lake at Camp Still Waters.
The protagonists take the form of a group led by scientists going to investigate the odd occurrences at Camp Still Waters following the earthquake. The two scientists, their intern and two muscle heads go out into the Canadian wilderness to investigate. There, the story of the serial killer and the monsters collide.
I can buy into the two stories coming together. The serial killer, Ben Ray Collins, was written perfectly and was by far, the best written character in the book. The seismic activity and the mystery surrounding it were also written really well and it kept me intrigued through the book. The only problem I saw was with the main characters themselves. The depth that was written into Ben Ray Collins was missing from the protagonists.
This was not a bad book, I love the dual antagonists in the story and wanted read so much more about Ben Ray Collins, but at times his character got lost in the rest of the story. Still a solid 3/5 from me on this one.
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