What is your opinion?
Entertaining
"Enjoyable read, with lots of twists and turns in the plot maiming this a well-turned mystery., especially when key characters seem more guilty than they are. Nice characters, even peripheral characters well drawn and entertaining. A few problems with punctuation, particularly over quotation marks and a few spelling mistakes where similar sounding words had been auto-spelled and not checked properly. A fairly gentle pace, but that suits this kind of drama, where there is no urgency or race against time involved. Overall a good read."
Dinner with Jackson: he'll watch your 6 and pick up the check
"Immaculate Crossroads is the story of Jackson Forbes, an early retired tracer for an insurance company who gets pulled back in the game with the promise of a hefty payday in exchange for his cool head and quick thinking. His job: retrieve archaic documents that everyone, from the pope to some rookie treasure hunters, have their hearts set on finding first and for keeps. This story embodies everything that is fun about the mystery-thriller genre: a main character that is smart and a genuinely good guy with a reputation that precedes him, a cool femme fatale character that warms to our main hero and, of course, treasure hunting. It is listed under mystery-drama and with good reason-there is some very lovely and heartbreaking moments between Jackson and Anita, as they find safety in each other. This isn't distracting from the action as Jackson always has a reason to be paranoid about his safety and Anita's. In the spirit of constructive criticism the story needs a tight edit to clean up grammar and punctuation. I would also suggest a very clear idea of who Anita is, what she looks like, the things she likes, the way she acts and the things she says. She started off Taiwanese I believe but later was described a bit more vaguely-could be white, could be Asian, could be Spanish. I also noticed she began to take on Jackson's style of speaking, for example, saying shish/sheesh which seems to be a Jackson specialty. I think this could definitely work in later novels but in our first introduction of her, I think she needs to be outlined clearly and kept as such, with a gradual softening of her character...like maybe she really only takes to Mandy initially and then warms to the rest of the family. Take this with a grain of salt, just one person's thoughts. I would also suggest very clearly laying out the history this story is based on, the history of DeMolay, and continuing to refer to it throughout the story. This is simply because readers are constantly having our attention pulled elsewhere and need the reminder: oh yeah, this is what the main character cares about and this is why I should care about it too. Plus, religious history is super interesting. The author is clearly well versed in this genre and has created a hero who is easy to love and relate to: blue collar enough to eat at the local diner, observant enough to keep his number one gal safe and humble enough not to brag about any of it. Looking forward to more Jackson Forbes' adventures!"
