Crossroads by Keta Diablo - Review

[Keta Diablo]

The Book Wenches Review
Title: Crossroads
Author: Keta Diablo
Author’s website: http://ketadiablo.blogspot.com/
Publisher: Phaze Publishing
Release Date: March 2009
ISBN: 9781606591390
Length: Novella
Format: Electronic
Genre: Contemporary – Paranormal – Thriller – GLBT
Sensuality Level: 4.5
Rating: 4
Reviewed by: BD Whitney

Five years ago, Frank McGuire’s partner on the Baltimore police force, Quinn Brennan, was killed while on duty. Frank resigned from the force the next day, became a private investigator, and now specializes in finding missing children.

When Quinn’s widow calls him asking for help finding her missing son, Frank doesn’t hesitate. Although he hasn’t seen the boy – who at twenty-two is no longer a child – in five years, he remembers how Rand used to look at him with more than just hero-worship in his eyes. He also remembers his own guilty response to the younger man. Now it seems that the brat has dropped out of college to smoke pot, roam the streets, and “find” himself. When Frank finds him, he’s going to teach him a lesson and drag him home by his collar if he needs to.

Frank finds Rand easily enough, and what is supposed to be a scare to send him home ends up being a mind-blowing sexual encounter. Frank also finds that Rand is in possession of evidence linking him to a series of brutal killings in Baltimore. Killings that he has been consulting on for the police force. What is Rand’s link to the killer known as The Black Rail? Somehow, the younger man has gotten himself mixed up in some pretty nasty business. Whether Rand wants it or not, Frank is going to get him out of this mess and put a stop to the killer’s hold on the city.

In Crossroads, Keta Diablo gives us a tale of crime, passion, and the paranormal rendered in an almost film noir style. This short novella is less a full-blown story than it is a slice of life for its characters. It documents how the relationship between the two main characters begins, and it sets a tone for the interaction between them, but it certainly doesn’t resolve any differences between them. It also leaves Rand and Frank with a “happily for now” ending and does not address the possibility of a “happily-ever-after” for them. If Ms. Diablo were prone to write series, I would hazard a guess that we would meet up with these two characters in the future.

In Frank and Rand, Ms. Diablo gives us characters who are not particularly likeable but are fascinating nevertheless. Frank proves himself to be sympathetic by the fact that he uses his psychic gift to find missing children. However, he also exhibits a selfish and perhaps even predatory side in his treatment of Rand. Rand exhibits a typical youthful thoughtlessness when he cuts himself off from his family for the sole purpose of smoking weed and exercising his independence. The reader can’t help but think that he perhaps deserves any lesson that Frank doles out. In a way, he does need to be “scared straight.”

Crossroads is charged with dark eroticism and contains a couple of scenes that are intensely sexual in nature. Since they entail dubious consent – definitely not rape, but they probably could have gone in that direction with just a little effort – I have rated the sensuality of this story a 4.5. Overall, I thought this story was quite well done and very worth the read. I can see that Teagan and I will be tussling over who reads Ms. Diablo’s future releases. Heads I win…tails you lose, right?

Bobby, THE BOOK WENCHES: http://www.bookwenches.com/april09reviews.htm