Black Sand Beach V01: Are You Afraid of the Light? is a fun mystery in a traditional modern comic/graphic novel format. The spooky is spooky for the 10 to 14 crowd (slightly younger 
could do as well, but this is not for the overly sensitive reader as there are skeleton/zombie ghosts, a haunted lighthouse, odd looking characters who might have a live body in a bag, and um… not cows … wandering around). But nothing is really over the top. Except, it is. There is no seriousness here. Just plain old fashioned fun.
And of course the humor at times is at a very bathroom level. (Yes, I was amused.) And the illustrations are goofy (to say the least. You just have to see them). The cover shows you what you are in for: purple and blue hair, big eyes, spiky haired characters. Inside, you find on the pages an aunt riding a ram, a father telling dad jokes, a stepmother who needs to charge her cell phone, purple potatoes, neighbors who steal electricity (and who knows what else) and that lighthouse.
And a good time can be had by all in this first of a series by Richard Fairgray. Mysterious events surround Dash, his cousins and his friend Lily. The fact that the neighbors are not “all there” is the least of their worries! (There is that question of what was in that sack they were dragging around). There are ghosts (who were sailors drowned as the lighthouse never properly worked and who seem to know Dash on a first name bases), lighthouses that turn themselves on (as said, it never did work right) and things that are REALLY not cows that like to wander around and pretend to get caught in hammocks. And again, not to mention some odd purple potatoes that have more in them then just butter.
Fantasy, science fiction, mystery, adventure and humor are all rolled into one book that, while it might not become a classic, it certainly has classic moments (and way too many not cows)!
