What follows is suspenseful and ultimately violent though filtered through Ruben's nonviolent perspective. He and his older brother Cole travel to a desolate village in search of the killer, so that the coroner will release the body for burial.

'When the Dead Man got Rachel I was sitting in the back of a wrecked Mercedes wondering if the rain was going to stop.' So it is that 14-year-old Ruben, who can read minds, vicariously witnesses his sister's murder. Thus, the question of how Cole comes upon a key piece of evidence is brushed away with Ruben's comment, Does it matter?” Readers have sat through a lot of brutality (albeit strikingly written brutality) to get that information, so the answer is, well, yeah, it does. However, as in Kissing the Rain (2004), Brooks has trouble tying up loose ends. Psychic Ruben can see things happening miles away, so Cole's battles with those responsible for Rachel's death are literally seen through Ruben's eyes. The author uses an interesting technique to heighten that effect. Brooks' great strength is his talent for intense description he makes readers see, feel, and smell all that Ruben does most of it coarse, disgusting, and ugly. He knows, for instance, that his ice-cold brother, Cole, is going to get into and cause trouble when he decides to go to desolate Dartmoor, where Rachel met her end. Perhaps it is his Gypsy blood that gives him second sight Ruben can see and feel things others can't. Fourteen-year-old Ruben Ford is sitting in his father's junkyard when he knows knows that his older sister, Rachel, has been raped and murdered.

The road of the dead by kevin brooks