Dede

Patent Leather Mary-Janes (Sentinel/Homicide: Life on the Streets (X-Files))

Reviewed by Kathryn A on 15th September 2000

This story was very uneven. This author isn't a newbie - this is apparently her sixth story. I like crossovers, so, though I've never seen HLOTS, I thought I'd try it out, see what these other characters could bring to the story. And it started off reasonably well; we got introduced to Tim Bayliss, had a good bit of backstory without it being an information dump, got shown a few of his fellow characters.

The sinister build-up of the serial killer, including his signature (of patent leather Mary-Janes) was creepy enough.

However... plotwise, it would have been leaner to just make it either just a HLOTS story or just a Sentinel story; half the time half the characters seemed extraneous, it would have worked just as well with either Tim or Blair as the one which the killer fixated upon.

Mulder pops in for a bit, but he wasn't really needed for the plot either.

I didn't like the characterisation of Blair. He wasn't himself, and I don't mean that because he lost it when the pressure got too intense -- I'm talking about before that point in the story was reached. At one point, he seemed like he was channelling Jim, and later on he seemed far too incompetent/wimpy; where do fanfic authors get the idea that Blair has this huge self-esteem problem?

There were also a few cases of word-misuse: repeatedly using "site" instead of "sight", "rite" instead of "right". Also I noticed a couple of "family consoling" instead of "family counselling". A good beta would have picked these up where a spellchecker couldn't have. That was just a little problem though.

The clincher was the original female character (OFC). I'm just going to give you a description here, and see what you think. "She had dark cinnamon red hair which flowed halfway down her supple back." She has green eyes. She has an unusual name (Kelsey Khouri). She's the best profiler in the FBI (apart from Mulder). Heads turn when she walks in the room. She's tough but vulnerable. She reams out Blair for his actions in TSbyBS, using knowledge that she couldn't have known (such as, that his dissertation hadn't been submitted). She can comfort Blair better than Jim can (not to mention what happens in the epilogue). Oh, and she also has a pilot's licence, something which we didn't need to be told, as it is completely irrelevant to the plot.

I rest my case.