Crossover of the Week

Late January-March 2009

PLAY WITH FIRE

            Occult detectives Quincey Morris and Libby Chastain and their allies – FBI agents Dale Fenton and Colleen O’Donnell, hitman Mal Peters, and a demon using the mortal alias Ashley –battle a cult that is literally trying to raise Hell on Earth. Quincey says that one of his ancestors was a Marshal in Dodge City. Quincey and Libby help occult P.I. Barry Love clear a hellhound out of his office. O’Donnell refers to a report written by Monica Reyes of the New Orleans Field Office. Fenton and O’Donnell’s boss Susan Whitlavich became head of the Behavioral Science Unit after her own boss, Jack Crawford, suffered a fatal heart attack. Whitlavich tells Fenton and O’Donnell that she’s smoothed things over for them with Bernie Jenks at the Las Vegas Field Office.

            Novella by Justin Gustainis, 2012. Quincey’s ancestor is Marshal Matt Dillon from the radio and television series Gunsmoke. Barry Love is a disguised version of Clive Barker’s occult detective Harry D’Amour. Agent Monica Reyes is from The X-Files. Jack Crawford is from Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels. Crawford died of a heart attack in Hannibal. Las Vegas-based FBI agent Bernie Jenks met Carl Kolchak in the TV movie The Night Stalker. Bernie would be elderly by 2009, so this Bernie Jenks must be a relative of his, likely his grandson. The end of this novella leads directly into the next entry in the series, Midnight at the Oasis. However, as explained in the 2011 entry for that novella, Gustainis must have compressed the actual amount of time between the two stories.