Jon’s Mysteries #2
I’ve enjoyed other series by A.J. Sherwood, but Jon’s Crazy Head-Boppin’ Mystery didn’t quite land for me. Jon and Donovan work their first case as a team, trying to help the police find out who is attacking women as soon as they get off work. New characters get introduced, leaving the door open for them to have further storylines in the following books.
I listened to the audiobook version. I can’t gauge if the accents were accurate, but they came across as caricatures. Once I got accustomed to it, the narration was good. Every once in a while, the accents would take me out of the story, but I could get back into it fairly quickly. I would have preferred the narrator skip the accents, as he’d have done a great job otherwise.
The mystery itself could have been more suspenseful and tense. I found it to be ho-hum. Jon only tackles the toughest of cases, but it didn’t seem like the non-supernatural police members didn’t do much investigation. The supernatural team members were heavily relied on. I didn’t feel any sense of urgency, so whenever Jon and Donovan received a request for exceptional measures, it was weird when they agreed at a significant personal cost.
Jon’s ability to short electronics adds a lot of hilarity as it frustrates other people. I might have misheard it, but I recall that Jon was driving a Humvee. Maybe the first book explored how Jon modified the vehicle, but every car (even older ones) has a significant amount of electronics, so I wonder how he wouldn’t have shorted it out. Even if Donovan were driving, Jon would come into contact with it and short it. This book has a lot of exposition, and it would have been nice if Sherwood had touched on this explanation again.
The plot didn’t grab me. Jon’s Crazy Head-Boppin’ Mystery focuses on the mystery/police procedural and the relationship between Jon and Donovan. I’ve already mentioned that the mystery wasn’t engaging, but Jon and Donovan’s relationship was also meh. Donovan kept making statements implying he’s never agreeing to something again, and it takes too much out of Jon; it’s his job to protect him. A few chapters later, Donovan gets convinced Jon should do the thing again. Jon has a strong personality, but Donovan comes across wishy-washy and undefined. They moved in together so quickly, of course there are hesitations and uncertainty, they barely know each other! One of Donovan’s lines really stuck with me: “Time without you is not time to me”. A little clunky, but in context it came across very romantically.
Jon’s Crazy Head-Boppin’ Mystery continues building the neat world of supernatural policing, but the story itself was just fine. It is good to listen to while doing chores or driving. It won’t make it to the top of any of my lists.