Trigger warning for graphic descriptions of crime scenes.
For someone who sees ghosts, one would think that Rita Todacheene should’ve run far away from work as a crime scene photographer. But, as we get deeper into Ramona Emerson’s Shutter, we learn that Rita is the kind of person who can’t turn away from the dead—even when the smarter choice would’ve been to listen to her grandmother and medicine man and stay far, far away from death.
Rita is not at her best when we meet her. It would be hard for anyone to be at their best at the scene of a particularly grisly body dump (I was actually a little nauseated by this one), but Rita hasn’t slept in days and it’s getting hard for her to keep the ghosts at bay. The ghost of the woman whose body was strewn along the highway, Erma, is a hard ghost to ignore. Rita has barely had a chance to turn in the memory cards from her camera when Erma appears and demands that Rita help with her unfinished business.
As Rita pushes through her work photographing crime sense, interstitial chapters show us scenes from Rita’s childhood with her grandmother on the New Mexico side of the Navajo (Diné) Reservation. Rita has always seen ghosts, even when she was very small, and it took a lot of time and effort for her to be “normal.” According to her grandmother and her local medicine man, the dead should be firmly ignored. Under no circumstances should Rita talk to them, let alone do favors for them. Given the way Erma and some of the other ghosts torment Rita, it’s hard to argue with the advice. It’s also hard to argue with the advice when Rita’s efforts at investigating Erma’s death reveal deadly corruption in the Albuquerque Police Department.
Shutter is a fast read, with some interesting details about Navajo life, but my overall impression is one of weary despair. The crime scenes Rita is sent to are so numerous that they blend together into a hopeless sense of violence. Rita’s memories of her family are tainted by the scars of residential boarding schools, lack of economic opportunity, alcoholism, and frequent death. Even the resolution of the mystery at the end of this book doesn’t do much to dispel its sadness. Readers may enjoy the book’s originality (I did) but should be prepared for a hefty emotional toll.
It’s funny because it makes me think of the book Later by Stephen King, about a boy who can see ghosts of dead people. Looks like the hero of King’s book, Jamie, should apply to become a crime scene photographer 😉