William Dempsey is a New York City cop. He has recently been cleared, along with two fellow officers, of the killing of a Haitian immigrant called Israel Lara. He has not coped with the stress too well, having descended into a drink and drugs haze, and has been declared unfit for duty; his girlfriend has left him and he has a floater in his eye that obscures his vision (and hence the book's title).

Despite his optometrist's assurances that his eye problem is just a common floater – a small protein particle that has detached and is now floating inside his eyeball – he is convinced that it is part of something that is happening to him and connected with the hallucinations he is experiencing.

Dempsey decides to look into the events surrounding the shooting in an attempt to bring himself back to normal. He soon discovers that one of his fellow defendants in the recent trial (Manny Pinero) may have had involvement with the victim and a voodoo cult in New York City.

This is your normal kind of horror novel. There is much more a mystery format than a traditional horror story. We follow the investigation from Dempsey's point of view, learning about the world of the voodoo cult in New York and the involvement of his partner Pinero and even his girlfriend with him as he slowly undercovers the truth and begins to understand the background to Lara's death.

Also the writing style is a little different to most other horror I've read. This is almost literary in style. The writing is so very rich and detailed, Shepard manages to create a fully 3D world peopled by some believable characters.

Having the story follow Dempsey through his investigation allows the author to gradually introduce the voodoo at the core of the tale, without the pace seeming stilted or artificial. And the manner in which the character slowly begins to accept the existence of the supernatural manages the fine line between the unbelievable easy acceptance and outright denial in a manner that seems almost natural.

This is a horror novel that should have an appeal beyond the regular horror fans, it does not contain excessive gore nor out of this world grotesquerie that can limit the appeal to non-core readers. It is of a very high standard, but given PS Publishing's track record this should come as no surprise.

Synopsis
Detective William Dempsey of the New York Police Department is having a bad time of it. Having endured -- along with his brothers in blue, Manny Pinero and Evan Haley -- a months-long homicide trial for the inadvertant (or was it?) shooting of Haitian immigrant, Israel Lara, he's been abandoned by his fiancee, deemed unfit for duty, and is sinking into an oblivion of vodka and pills. Then there's that little problem with his eye.

A floater, his optometrist says. Nothing to worry about. Microscopic bits of protein adrift in the humor that cast shadows on the retina. But Dempsey's worried. For one thing, instead of dispersing, the floater continues to grow, occluding his vision and causing disturbing hallucinations. For another, his partner, Pinero, is behaving strangely and there's the suggestion that the floater may not be a harmless opthamological incident but an emblem that signals a peculiar form of vengeance and the imminence of a voodoo god. As he tries to determine what is happening, Dempsey's investigation leads him from rave culture to santeria ceremonies in storefront temples and, ultimately, to a circumstance that may have cosmic implications and a truth that lies hidden in the deepest sub-basements of his own mind.