Richard
Carter,
a damaged
soldier,
a damaged
soul.
The Blue Creek novels are a mixture of suspense and mystery. Each story deals with obsession.
The main character Richard
Carter copes with PTSD, survivor's guilt, and periodic depression stemming from an incident while he was a Marine serving
in Somalia. Although he says, "No one ever goes to war and comes out the better for it," he cannot excuse himself for what he did there.
Richard is chronically haunted by his past, but he
is not morose. His mind tells him one thing—his heart another. If he can't gain redemption, he can try to make the world
a little better.
As
first an amateur sleuth and then an investigator and criminologist, his genius is neither brilliance, nor intuition,
nor yet analytical proficiency. It is obsessive-compulsive persistence.
" Are you okay?"
he asked as he approached the fire.
" What a strange thing to ask," she said. " How could I be?"
—Richard and Jill on the island, Bonne Femme
Carter carries a ghost cast into his life by fate.
The "boy soldier" exists only in his mind, but he cannot be exorcised. He is too honest to excuse what occurred
that day in the streets of war-torn Mogadishu as merely something that merely happened to him. Although that is exactly
the case, he can never forgive himself for doing in that split-second something other than what he what he was trained to
do.