Review: Jon’s Downright Ridiculous Shooting Case (Jon’s mysteries #1) by AJ Sherwood
A psychic without an anchor. A student in trouble. A shooter on the loose.
I’m Jonathan Bane, a licensed psychic who consults for the police. I routinely help the police put the bad guys away and, for that reason, the criminal world doesn’t like me much. People like to take a swing at me, or go stabbity, or try for a gun. It makes for interesting times. My psychic ability prevents me from handling anything electronic—and I do mean ANYTHING, I fry it in seconds—so calling for help isn’t always a possibility.
I need an anchor, a partner, but I’m resigned: it’s just wishful thinking.
At least, I thought so until he walked through the door.
Donovan Havili looks like a thug and has the soul of a superhero. He shines so bright in my vision it’s like watching a supernova. He definitely has the right mindset and skills for this crazy job. But asking anyone to take me on long-term is a bit much. And now we’ve got multiple cases to handle, a Chinese exchange student falsely accused who needs our help, and someone taking random shots at me. It’s a bit much for any new guy to handle and I’m half-afraid that my new partner will run for the door.
But in Donovan Havili, the criminal world has met its match. And maybe, just maybe, I have as well.
Trigger Warnings:
Your average cop show violence and criminals.
I got this book on KU.
Review:
Dear AJ Sherwood,
A friend suggested I try these series when I was complaining about not finding any enjoyable books with an m/m love story and overall I am happy I read it. I think Jon’s character is the main reason. I certainly have read enough books by now featuring psychics as main or supporting characters, but those people (if they had genuine psychic abilities) mostly read the past or the future, or could read different objects by touching them.
Off the top of my head I could not recall reading a book with the character’s having similar abilities to Jon’s. Actually now I am thinking about it, I cannot say that I can be hundred percent sure what those abilities were. Jon is able to read a person’s aura, specifically different lines in their auras and based on that he can state whether the person is lying or not (that is why he is so helpful to the police when he is observing the questioning of the alleged criminal), so if that’s the only thing he could do, it would be easy enough to understand.
However, it sounded as if in some ways Jon’s abilities were similar to what an empath would do – he could pick up all kinds of emotions by looking at the person’s aura, but only when he is looking at that person. At the same time sometimes Jon was picking up very very precise information from looking at the aura (when it was plot convenient, it felt like), so at the most I can say that his skills felt like a mixture of empath and telepath. I am actually not sure why the author called him psychic at all.
No matter what we call him though, I really, really liked Jon. He is heavily focused on doing the right thing, on helping people. He has some abandonment issues from his youth, thus his love life had been hard and anchoring, as mentioned in the blurb, was hard. Moreover, when Jon for various reasons needs to do in-depth reading of the person usually to help in solving a criminal case, he ends up severely incapacitated for several days and having an anchor would have helped mitigate the effects of those readings.
Anchoring is a connection with another person, a bond if you will, but not necessarily a bond with the loved one. Another psychic who works with Jon (she is a more traditional one, she mostly “reads” the objects) is anchored to her sister. As the blurb heavily implies, Jon ends up anchoring with Jonathan, a new employee who comes to work for the agency and this partnership ends up being very successful in both their personal and professional lives. I liked Jonathan too and he proved to be a wonderful help to Jon. I was actually fascinated to see how their chemistry really worked for me.
Normally I don’t particularly care for a story where one of the characters needs a lot of protection but somehow here it really worked for me. Jon does not need protection because he is a helpless damsel in distress, he needs protection because especially when he is doing deep readings and not just then, he loses “situational awareness” to use Jonathan’s words. In other words he has to concentrate so hard on his work that he would be doing his work less effectively if he pays more attention to outside danger. Jon is not a helpless character at all and maybe thats why this worked for me. I also have to note that love connection itself appears pretty fast, but I suppose I have to be grateful for that to be three weeks instead of three minutes :).
I liked the mystery plot of the book as well, but since I have now read book two as well (which I mostly enjoyed) I can see that both mysteries in a sense had somewhat similar resolutions which I do find a little eye rolling and no, I cannot tell you about the similarities. And my eye rolling was not because of the similarities, but because of what actually happened. Sorry, spoilers!
Grade: B
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Sirius. I read this three years ago and enjoyed it, too.
You mentioned looking for recommendations, Sirius. I know that you’ve reviewed some of Kim Fielding’s newer books. I was wondering if you’ve also read some of her older titles such as Rattlesnake; Astounding!; and Motel. Pool.
@Kareni: I am glad the book worked. No, but Kim Fielding is a strange writer for me, most of her books I tried started well for me but completely fell apart by the end.