Busted - Zachary O'Toole

[PaperMoon]

Description from Amazon: Pulled over on a rainy night, Joe's bad day starts to look up when he realizes the cop pulling him over is none other than his lover, Alex. Until Alex pretends not to know him, and finally drags him into the station for driving under the influence-and getting too personal with a Detective. Furious, Joe demands to know what the hell is wrong with his lover. Only to discover that the Detective he kissed is actually named Chris, and claims no knowledge of Alex, despite the fact they could be twins. But before Joe can begin to sort out the mystery of Chris and Alex, the murders begin...

I was really looking forward to uncovering the intricacies of this intriguing paranormal mystery romance. The novel sets up the love-hate dynamic between slim and gorgeous HR manager Joe Hennesey and arresting officer Chris Gagnon who is the ‘doppleganger’ image of Joe’s lover of four months Alex. Once these guys (and their friends) navigate past the initial body-double mix-up, the real troubles begin when Chris’s background offers no evidence of a long-lost twin but yet … Joe finds himself almost living in two parallel universes – where lookalike Chris and Alex exist but never actually meet. And of course one cannot have paranormal mysteries without spirit auras, bone-chilling series murders, pervasive evil influences, supernatural sightings of ghoulish beasties.

This reminds me of that Demi Moore film Passion of Mind where a woman lives two lives – one of which is in her dreams but she’s not sure which is one is real and which one is not. I quite enjoyed the film – loved the storyline and characters – just wasn’t too thrilled with the logics behind of the ‘mystery’ … the ending resolution didn’t gel at all for me. Likewise with O’Toole’s book which I found to be both frustrating and enjoyable. The Alex-Joe-Chris relationship is well written and I became quite engaged to see where the mystery would lead to and how it would be resolved.

The main protagonists and most of the secondary ones were well written characters. The backstories to what creates the emotional hang-ups for Joe and Chris/Alex were also realistic and believable. The thriller-scare components were suitable goose-bump raising for me … particularly when the flashes of silver metal started to haunt Joe’s peripheral vision! And while the mystery-whodunnit became resolved in the end (in typical cliff-hanger nail-biting style) – I was left with several ‘what the hell happened’ impressions as to how the murders were brought about, the motives behind the murders as well as the major doppleganger-twin conundrum for Chris/Alex. A couple of paranormal scenes were well written but never delved into at all which made me wonder why they were included in the first place e.g. the monster under the bed.

I suggest the book could do with some plot-re-writes / rethinks to resolve these not so minor points. A significantly more cohesive and structured novel would result and even raise the reading enjoyment quotient it already possesses.

[Octobercountry]

Pity---the initial premise sounds extremely intriguing, but I REALLY don't care for novels that leave me wondering "What the heck just happened?" so perhaps I'll give this one a miss....