Blue Diablo
by Ann Aguirre
Penguin, 2009, ISBN #978-0-451-46264-0
Paranormal Romance
.
Eighteen months ago, Corine Solomon crossed the border and wound up in Mexico City, fleeing her past, her lover, and her ‘gift’. Corine, a handler, can touch something and know its history –and sometimes, its future. Using her ability, she can find missing persons –and that’s why people never stop trying to find her. People like her ex, Chance.
Chance, whose uncanny luck has led him to her doorstep, needs her help. Someone dear to them both has gone missing in Laredo, Texas, and the only hope of finding her is through Corine’s gift. But their search may prove dangerous as the trail leads them into a strange, dark world of demons and sorcerers, ghosts and witchcraft, zombies –and black magic….
Corine is used to starting over, and eighteen months ago she did just that and traded her high-risk career (using her ‘gift’ to find bad guys) for a rustic second hand shop and anonymity. And to make it a clean break, she slipped away from her boyfriend, Chance, without a word, while he slept.
Now Chance has tracked her down in Mexico. Not to try to entice her back, but to get her help to find his mother, who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Corine agrees only because she was once so close to his mother, and she is worried something dire has happened.
This story is a fast-paced, high-stakes race to find the missing woman, taking Corine and Chance to Laredo and into the seedy underworld of retired gun dealers, wizards, zombies and even the ‘Hand of God’. Along the way, Corine and Chance explore whether or not they are really ‘over’ and discover that they may not have known each other as well as they had once thought –there’s a whole lot more to the other than they’d realized. And there’s definitely still interest and –dare they think it? –love, between them.
This novel is not a romance. While Corine and Chance explore their feelings, they are not satisfactorily involved by the end of the novel. In fact, the final line of the novel leaves their relationship very much in doubt. There’s more time spent to creating a love triangle, with Jesse, another ‘gifted’ person and local police investigator, than in developing things between Corine and Chance. The love triangle was somewhat reminiscent of Evanovich’s Plum series (between Stephanie, Joe and Ranger), with the heroine bouncing back and forth between point of interest. Clearly, the author is setting up a series here.
Overall a fun read. This is the 1st book in the Corine Soloman series.
Assessment: Highly recommended, though not a romance. I did pre-order the next in the series from the author, which is due out later in 2010.
