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Title: Camp Hell: a PsyCop Novel
Author: Jordan Castillo Price
Genre: Modern paranormal
URL: JCPBooks
Price: US $6.49
Other Information/warnings: explicit m/m, horror, violence
Summary [from the publisher]:
Victor Bayne honed his dubious psychic skills at one of the first psych training facilities in the country, Heliotrope Station, otherwise known as Camp Hell to the psychics who’ve been guests behind its razorwire fence
Vic discovered that none of the people he remembers from Camp Hell can be found online, and there’s no mention of Heliotrope Station itself, either. Someone’s gone through a lot of trouble to bury the past. But who?
My review: Ms Price has begun self-publishing her Psycop novels and ironically, the editing quality has only gone up. This is the fifth installment, wherein Victor Bayne finds out more about his miserable but forgotten past at Camp Hell, a supposed training centre for psychics, and about the powers controlling his life now.
As she’s done in previous books, the author revisits familiar characters to great effect, while introducing some new and compelling ones. So we meet Bayne’s straight (in every sense) partner, Bob Zigler, again, along with the empathic, perpetually horny Crash, and the villain of a previous story, now in jail and wanting Vic to get him out. Stefan Russeau was mentioned in previous stories, and now appears in the flesh, and a new and terrifying omniscient organisation rears its head, justifying Vic’s perpetual paranoia and complicating his life even more than seeing dead people does.
The characterisations are, as usual, rich and full and interesting. Strangely, the only one who feels somewhat flat is Jacob – I felt rather detached from him in this, even though we learn more about him. Vic’s really quite self-absorbed, which accounts for some of it, but Jacob never seems to be fully involved in the rather desperate worries Vic is facing, and his participation in the endgame comes a little out of nowhere. I’m not saying he’s handled badly, but he’s less vibrant than in the other novels.
The plot is probably the twistiest yet in the series, with so much going on there’s a real danger of losing the thread. There’s a bit of repetition with Vic going back several times to question various people, which creates confusion and tends to slow the pace a tad. Yet it’s an absorbing story, well tied up at the end, with a few surprises. Vic is, as always, both fascinating and irritating in his drug-fuelled stumbling competence, his paranoid and cowardly courage. He’s definitely growing and changing as the series continues, which is always rewarding. Jacob hasn’t really changed, which I suppose is one reason he appears a tad flat. We still don’t know what makes the man tick, whether he’s being entirely honest, and what, if anything, he’s hiding. Vic’s an open book – too open. The only person, in fact, who isn’t hiding anything from us because it’s all in his POV. Everyone else in the novels has a secret, and though there is a certain amount of personal resolution for Victor at the end of this novel, we have by no means arrived at the bottom of the hidden truths.
The writing is impeccable, as is the editing – very professional indeed, like the presentation. Ms Price is one of the best sex and action scene writers in this genre, and she doesn’t disappoint here. What I like is her knack of using the sex to further the plot and the characterisation – there’s plenty of it, yet none of it is gratuitous. It’s all pretty damn hot too.
It’s a very long novel – 296 pages – and that’s probably the only fault with it. It’s a bit too long, even for me who loves meaty stories. I can’t say it’s flabby or padded, but the reader’s attention is severely taxed at times. It’s a highly enjoyable read though, and if you like the Psycop series, this is yet another excellent entry. Definitely not one to start with. Like Secrets, Camp Hell will leave you wanting more of Victor and Jacob, and the other screwed up members of the Psycop universe.
