The Jack Bishop series is a set of Young Adult Urban Fantasy novels by Steve Diamond of the Elitist Book Reviews and published by Ragnarok Publications.
The first novel, Residue, follows 17-year-old Jack Bishop after his father is abducted and a monster is let loose in his small town. As he looks for his father, he begins to notice that he can see the psychic residue left behind by monsters and murder victims. Along with the mind-reading Alexandra (Alex) Courtney, Jack uses his growing ESP abilities to stop the deaths in the town, and find out why his father was taken.
Residue was released in April, 2015.
This series contains the following tropes:
- Accidental Pervert: A relatively mild, one might even say too much so, is when Jack thinks of Alex in a swimsuit around her (since she's a telepath). Yes, because that's only how bad it would get with a seventeen-year-old-boy.
- Action Girl: Alexander Courtney is one of these despite being a teenager.
- Alex also serves as Alex's Action Girlfriend since he's the Non-Action Guy. At least until the end.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Averted. Alex is very happy with her powers even if she finds most people are shallow and boring.
- Bad Boss: Helix frames Jack's father for the deaths of its employees. Possibly subverted in the fact he may be complicit.
- Badass Family: The Bishop family turns out to have included a bunch of psychics and monster hunters.
- Big Bad: Whyte appears to be this. It's actually Alex's father.
- Big Bad Dad: Alex's dad turns out to be one of these.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Whyte is portrayed as one of these. We discover that Alex's dad is no better.
- Dirty Mind-Reading: A Downplayed Trope example as Alex only picks up Jack thinking of her in a swimsuit and mentions how most guys (and girls) are shallow.
- Disappeared Dad: The disappearance of Jack's father kicks off the plot.
- Dreaming of Times Gone By: The most useful of Jack's ESP abilities.
- Expy: Helix has a large number of similarities to the Umbrella Corporation.
- Evilutionary Biologist: Whyte's corporation is claimed to be this by Helix. It turns out they both are.
- High-School Dance: The climax of Residue takes place at one.
- Kids Are Cruel: The kids of the town blame Jack for Helix leaving town after the massacre due to Helix blaming his father.
- Living Lie Detector: An obvious advantage of telepathy which Helix doesn't hesitate to make use of.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Alex turns out to be one of these.
- Megacorp: Helix isn't as big as some but they have entire towns working for them and can cover up dozens of death, easily.
- Mundane Utility: Alex uses her powers to get A's in school.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: More or less how Jack's ESP works.
- Psychic Block Defense: Jack develops this as a skill from his father's journals.
- Psychic Powers: A major theme of the group.
- Psychometry: Another function of Jack's ESP.
- Telepathy: Alex's major power is this.
- Superpowerful Genetics: Jack turns out to be the most powerful telepath Helix has ever found.
- Tested on Humans: Portrayed in as horrific a manner as its YA label would allow.
- Urban Fantasy: The genre of the book.
- Unwitting Test Subject: Alex has been monitoring Jack for years, unaware the reasons for such.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Leeches are extraordinarily unsympathetic evil monsters.
- Young Adult: What type of novel the book is classified as.
