LEV A.C. ROSEN'S PAGE: THE DISASTER GAY DETECTIVE AGENCY & EVANDER MILLS P.I. SERIES #1, #4

THE DISASTER GAY DETECTIVE AGENCY
LEV A.C. ROSEN
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: From award—winning, critically acclaimed crime writer Lev Rosen comes a punchy, hilarious mystery—thriller. Meet the disaster gays: They're messy. They're queer. And they're about to solve a murder… Or die trying.

Brandon is a hopeless romantic. So when a handsome stranger named Jon checks in at the hotel he works at and invites Brandon to his room, Brandon ignores the advice of his crew—a group of loveable and messy queer twenty—somethings—and accepts. What follows is a tale as old as time: they hook up, Jon promises to text, Brandon falls in love, and Jon ghosts. Case closed—or is it?

When Jon checks out early, leaving behind a bag of belongings and his cellphone, Brandon takes the phone and sets out to find him, thinking that this must at last be his Cinderella story.

But he gets more than he bargained for when he witnesses a murder—and sees Jon fleeing the scene.

Determined (and not in over their heads whatsoever), Brandon, Ollie, Nicole, and Ian decide to solve the mystery of the murder and uncover Jon's true identity…they just have to figure it out before a target falls on their own backs.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Those heady first friendships, the ones you really learn how to adult by forming and inhabiting...they're deep and they're still important to older you because you are formed by them for better and worse.

Here we are among Brandon, Ollie, Nicole, and Ian as they navigate the first changes in the structures that supported them. It's usually a significant other arriving or one departing. Most of us have been through that.

Few of us have had a potential love discovered in what looks like a guilty act at what certainly is a murder scene, like Brandon.

What ensues is the scoobygroup all pitching in to resolve Brandon's maybeboyfriend's involvement (if any) in the murder he was seen running away from the scene of. Naturally this means they need to solve the murder. A lot like Dame Agatha's Five Little Pigs we're treated to the scoobygroup's individual PoVs on the investigation and on the unfolding issue of who it is Brandon's found himself to fall for. I think the technique is one that works or fails on your readerly taste for the writing style. Author Lev uses a solidly comedic register throughout the story, giving the different scoobygoupers reasonably distinctive voices and just enough difference in what they see to keep me focused.

I don't want to tell you there's a rom-com vibe to the proceedings because that suggests the group will be all matched up by the end of the story. It's not like that, though the bantering suggests it will be in the formula of rom-com. I was partly glad that it didn't end up in the predictable couplings. It certainly would've been...forced...unless they found partners outside the scoobygroup.

All said, I was pretty convinced this was really a screenplay made novel-like because Author Lev's a well-established force at Poisoned Pen Press. It was almost obtrusive how filmable, how designed for visual scenes, this story is. I'm not saying that as a knock, I found myself reading happily along with the movie playing in my mental Grauman's Egyptian Theater in 70mm CinemaScope. It was a hoot!

I can't quite attach a full fifth star. I felt the reality, the full gravity, of the events the scoobygroup uncovered really sat uneasily with the narrative technique. Still, four and a quarter stars for the chaotic energy of the story, the sheer verve of the cast for their different roles and discoveries as the truth and the facts begin to converge...it was immersive to me, will feel like the spin cycle of your washing machine for others.

I expect we'll see more from the Disaster Gays. I'll be there.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

LAVENDER HOUSE (Evander Mills #1)
LEV A.C. ROSEN
Forge Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A delicious story from a new voice in suspense, Lev AC Rosen's Lavender House is Knives Out with a queer historical twist.

Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene’s recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret—but it's not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they've needed to keep others out. And now they're worried they're keeping a murderer in.

Irene’s widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept—his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.

Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He's seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn't extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy—and Irene’s death is only the beginning.

When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can’t lock out the real world forever. Running a soap empire can be a dirty business.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First in a new series of gay-led private-eye mysteries. Set in 1952 San Francisco, borning and burgeoning gay Mecca on the cusp of the Lavender Scare that was the less-famous shadow of McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare, the story concerns a murder within the quiet confines of rich queers. Queerness has always been more or less tolerated among the wealthy...Peter Thiel and Sam Altman aren't being shouted about on the screamy white guys channel, faggots though they are...whereas guys like our sleuth have to live with police harassment and the possibility of ghastly consequences for one's life if outed.

As is always the case in a mystery series, I recommend starting here at book one to get the foundational ethos of the sleuth...in this case Evander Mills, called Andy, a private investigator whose specialty will become among the queer community he once helped to oppress. These are taxpayers who cannot expect helpful, effective action on their problems from the police. Andy becomes a discreet and effective investigator. This time his talents are required by the wealthy and privileged, who *still* can't reliably command the services of police without facing ugliness. Andy's never been in that world before. He's dazzled by it...he's coming to terms with how people like he once was have perpetuated a cruelty they've inflicted as much as received.

Andy's learning how much his skills are needed among those who he honed them against. The emotional heart of the novel is his coming to terms with his own awful past, his awful actions, and what he can do as an adult (emotionally speaking) to help people who can't expect it if they're honest and truthful about themselves.

It's a story I thoroughly enjoyed, told in a voice I resonated well with, about people who belonged to a generation I had family among. I'll pursue the series with the zeal of a vice cop.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

MIRAGE CITY (Evander Mills #4)
LEV A.C. ROSEN
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Lev AC Rosen delivers a new and captivating 1950s mystery in this dazzling, award-winning series

Private Investigator Evander “Andy” Mills’ next case takes him out of his comfort zone in San Francisco—and much to his dismay, back home to Los Angeles. After a secretive queer rights organization called the Mattachine Society enlists Andy to find some missing members, he must dodge not only motorcycle gangs and mysterious forces, but his own mother, too.

Avoiding her proves to be a challenge when the case leads Andy to the psychological clinic she works at. Worlds collide, buried secrets are dug up, and Andy realizes he’s going to have to burn it all down this time if he wants to pull off a rescue. With secret societies, drugs, and doctors swirling around him, time is running out for Andy to locate the missing and get them to safety. And for him to make it back to San Francisco in one piece.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: In the time of the Lavender Scare, there was an equal and opposite reaction from the Mattachine Society among mostly gay men and the Daughters of Bilitis among lesbians. These brave souls were fighting for recognition that is now under threat...queers are just plain ol' people, entitled by their basic common humanity to equal access to civilization's resources. Laws are applied unequally in most of the world but aggressively so among queer folk. These early rights-seekers were incredibly brave, very effective, and thus targeted.

Enter Andy Mills to a missing persons case among these pioneering souls. Investigating the possible crime(s) Andy discovers things most extraordinarily awful happening to queer people simply because they were guilty of being Other. It was a time where moral panic among high-control lunatics was at fever pitch. At this same moment the Comics Code Authority was established along the lines of the Hays Code for the movies to forestall the government imposing censorship. This also neatly sidestepped the remedy of suing the government for unconstitutional infringement of free-speech rights, ensuring the abusive restrictions on representing queer people positively could continue.

Andy's case takes him deep into the consequences of this system's probably intended consequences. It was tough to read at times. It was worse to live, as is always the case in rougher-edged fiction. Shifting Andy's field of action, however reluctant he was to do so, to LA from San Francisco, allowed me to see him wrong-footed, still determined, and ultimately successful in resolving the case. How, I won't say because the Spoiler Stasi always lurk in readiness to shout their unhappiness at your disobedience to their iron whims.

It's book four in a series I've only read book one of, yet I got the development of Andy's character that's continued on the trajectory set in the first book. It would've been an even richer experience had I read two and three, but I'll get back to them soon enough. This series combines gay history's dark corners and one man's coming into his queerness more and more in an effective mélange of meddlesome meanness combatively counteracted.

A MURDER MOST CAMP, cozy amateur-sleuth mystery with added queerness!

A MURDER MOST CAMP
NICOLAS DiDOMIZIO
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The Guncle meets Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies in this fun, twisty mystery following a spoiled nepo baby forced to work at a struggling summer camp who stumbles into a real-life murder mystery he has no choice but to solve.

Rustic cabins. Lakefront bonfires. A painfully hot lifeguard. And a murder? Summer has never been this camp.

Mikey Hartford IV has coasted through his twenties in a distracted blur of yachts and sex and partying. But when his father discovers his latest million-dollar impulse buy and changes the terms of his trust, the party's finally over. Now, unless Mikey can make a positive contribution to the world before his thirtieth birthday—one that doesn't involve throwing cash at his problems—he'll never see another yacht again. (Or even so much as a canoe.)

Enter: Camp Lore, a struggling summer camp in upstate New York where Mikey has to work as the oldest, least-qualified staffer to prove that he can "do good" alongside his twelve-year-old aunt. (Yes, aunt.) But Mikey isn't sure he'll be able to survive the camp's ramshackle living conditions, let alone the gaggle of preteens who won't leave his side. And when his campers become obsessed with a local legend set at an abandoned cabin on the grounds, Mikey's chances of not making it through the summer become dangerously real—because it turns out there's a murder hidden beneath Camp Lore. And someone there will stop at nothing to keep it that way.

Solving a decade-old cold case will surely be enough "good" for Mikey to earn his inheritance. He just has to stay alive long enough to do it…

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: What a hoot! This is one of those reads you, as a member of a group being threatened with ever-worsening life outcomes by the very government holding power over you, really, really can use right about now. I was completely prepared to roll my eyes and smile. I needed the hit of "it will be okay, smile more" energy I expected from the description.

I got that. I also got a fun mystery to solve. (Which...well...I've been readin' mysteries since 1967, hard to pull the wool over my eyes.) And a grossly overprivileged trust-fund workshy queenie-queen gets thrown into existential panic as my whipped cream topping on the sundae of this story.

I deliberately avoided using the "cherry" metaphor for reasons I hope are obvious.

What happens is kinda not the point of the story, it's what Mikey becomes in dealing...for the first time...with what happens when his woefully unprepared self is the one in charge of handling what happens. A pillow princess by avocation, Mikey is not at all accustomed to using the space in his brain around his movie trivia and his taste for hot gold-diggers for much of anything. It's "cute" in a young guy. (I don't think so, but that's conventional wisdom.) Mikey's dad isn't havin' it as a life for his soon-to-be-thirty son. Mikey gets a job as his aunt's kind-of carer. The twist is his aunt is twelve. (Go Gramps!) And the job's at a summer camp for her.

He, the laziest human imaginable, is about to be responsible for everything a camp counselor does. Without having been to camp.

*gleeful hand rubbing*

It goes like you'd expect: Poorly.Except, of course, not really. Lurching from crisis to problem to rebellion, Mikey finds the way out of leading teens by example is following his own teen passion for filmmaking. Telling people the story of a long-ago counselor who vanished without a trace and is rumored to have been murdered...his aunt's a true-crime nut, no one in the 2020s has not encountered the genre pervading our culture, and really honestly in our heartiest of hearts are any of us utterly immune to the appeal? Real people fall into awful circumstances and never receive justice because there are so many who need it and so few who know how to deliver it.

Opportunity practically uses a tactical battering ram on Mikey's door. He's now leading by example, helping his aunt find purpose, and attracting the kind of man who's more than physiologically a man...a strong, capable, grounded person with a man's anatomy.

So here's my reservation, and the lost fifth star's explanation. Jackson is a hottie with a heart. Sofar so good. He's way out of Mikey's league, but people cross those lines all the time because "the heart wants what it wants or else it doesn't care." (Bless you, Emily Dickinson!) It's the...unearned-ness...of Jackson's love for Mikey, it's the way Mikey really doesn't set out to become Jackson's man but kinda selfishly just accepts it is happening, that sticks in my craw. It's consistent and fully supported in the storyline, it's clearly how Mikey would have to receive the loving attention of a man like Jackson as a gift, but theres something off about that dynamic for me.

But that's what reviews are about, right? I'm here to say "the story worked but..." so you'll have a picture of how you think you'll respond not just what events you can expect to occur. If you want a book report ask a chatbot for one.

Only real people have opinions.

PRECIOUS FRIENDS: Murder in Sag Harbor, and one uses "friends" advisedly for most of these old queens!

PRECIOUS FRIENDS: Murder in Sag Harbor (Angelo Perrotta Mysteries #3)
FRANK SPINELLI
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$6.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Most Precious Friends Hide the Darkest Secrets

"In the Hamptons, interlopers are as ubiquitous as deer ticks. The only way to remove one is to apply steady, even pressure on the head and pull."

JB Pulaski, a tenured sociology professor, thought surviving cancer was his greatest battle. Now, desperate to save his crumbling marriage, he retreats to his Sag Harbor summer home with his philandering husband Mike and teenage son Emilio.

Instead, he finds humiliation.

When Mike begins a public affair with Italian pianist Gianni Cuomo, JB becomes the summer's most whispered-about scandal—the cuckolded husband everyone pities but no one respects. But when Gianni is found murdered at an exclusive costume party, pity transforms into suspicion, and JB becomes the prime suspect.

Behind the gated driveways and manicured lawns lies a world where appearances are everything and loyalty is currency. As the investigation closes in, JB must confront not only a conspiracy designed to destroy him, but the darkness he's spent a lifetime suppressing. With his son's future hanging in the balance and his own violent impulses emerging, JB discovers that in the Hamptons, the most dangerous predators wear the most beautiful masks.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Angelo, the ostensible series character, turns Poirot on us and shows up once in a while to talk his buddy JB down from a ledge, or out of a corner, as his life unravels in the course of a murder investigation.

He's the prime suspect in the drowning death of the latest paramour seduced by his cheatin' dirtbag of a husband, Mike. Angelo can't get involved, obvs, because literally no one would trust his findings. And it helps nothing that JB's a recent recipient of chemo, which kicked more than his cancer: he's emotionally disregulated enough to have chased off another boy Mike was sexin' up by claiming (falsley?) to have been involved in previous suspicious deaths occurring in Sag Harbor. As that's happening, someone ups the emotional ante by threatening Mike and JB's college-age son Emilio.

Solid, sudsy stuff!

It's less Angelo than JB, and Rakesh his bestie pouring martinis for everyone. (Even Rakesh's alcoholic husband whose name I forget because I dislike him, not a great look there Rakesh. Also, lotsa lotsa names.) It felt like a gay version of Dynasty it was so seriously glam-80s evening soap. I was hugely entertained. I was pretty sure I knew who was behind the campaign to ruin JB and Mike's marriage and family. I was wrong. Mitigating my embarrassment, I mention again the large cast of characters, all with petty-to-powerful secrets...like Dynasty, but all openly (or not) gay.

I got this DRC first, before I knew it was ostensibly part of a series; it impacted my ability or desire to invest in the tale being told not at all. The characters are all fleshed out in this story to the extent they can be; I'm not going to pretend it's flawless, but the proper people end up in the proper beds.

Oh, beds: this is not a steamy story, so do't go in expecting that. It's terrific if what you want is some fun storytelling that keeps you thinking about how easy a thing it is to lose your reputation, and how seldom it has much to do with you. I think fun like this is worth every bit of your time and treasure committed to it.

JOSH LANYON'S PAGE: The Holmes & Moriarity mystery series

SOMEBODY KILLED HIS EDITOR (Holmes & Moriarity #1)
JOSH LANYON
Justjoshin Publishing(non-affiliate Bookshop link)
$19.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five...barely

The Publisher Says: Turning forty has left much to be desired for mystery writer Christopher Holmes. After both his boyfriend and long-time publisher dump him, he worries his life is officially at the start of a steep decline. Stranded at a writing conference for the weekend, he never expected to bump into an old flame... or stumble across a dead body in the woods.

Ex-cop JX Moriarty is soaking up all the newfound fame from his successful crime fiction. When the only bridge into the conference venue washes away to reveal a dead body, Moriarty falls back on old skills to secure and investigate the crime scene. But even his years of experience couldn't prepare him for the discovery of a second body: his ex-boyfriend Christopher's editor.

With all fingers pointing to Holmes, Moriarty has no choice but to clear the name of the man who broke his heart. Can the ex-lovers solve the murders and rekindle their passion, or will a killer attendee write them into the body count?

Somebody Killed His Editor is the first book in the madcap Holmes & Moriarty romantic gay mystery series. If you like tongue-in-cheek humor, crazy twists and turns, and sizzling chemistry, then you'll love Josh Lanyon's quirky novel.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: I enjoy mystery fiction. I enjoy gay fiction. I should batten like a tick on this series of gay-themed Moonlighting-lite mysteries.

I liked this one fine. I was not enraptured, delighted, or more than amused (the banter between the exes was funny at times). That is, however, more than enough to get me to go further into the series. It really struck me how different it is to have my PoV character be forty. It's a lovely change from romances without mystery elements that feature hot boys. Kit (as he is called) Holmes being at a career and personal-life crossroads felt so relatable because it wasn't his first go-round...he's lost his audience for the mysteries he writes, and is doing whatever he can to get them back or find new people to amuse.

The romantic interest between Kit and JX is paced oddly, yet I found myself more intrigued by it because of that. We don't discover they're exes until almost halfway through this story! I mean the synopsis gives it away but it isn't established until later...this was peculiar, but worked for me, as Kit's strangely willing reluctance to get involved in JX's plans for what to do after the body's discovered made me feel really curious about this off-kilter attitude. In many ways this is the heart of the story...reuniting, re-meeting really, with a history neither of you is ready to confront and could never decide to confront. That's what makes dealing with older people so relatable. I'd guess most of us past forty have had this experience, probably not with a romantic entanglement though.

I did find my eyes rolling a bit when Kit declaims the solution to the mystery before a "you must be wondering why I've summoned you here" style audience. The murderer agrees with him. And that, laddies and gentlewomen, is that.

It's not the way I myownself prefer to get off the horse, but it's got the virtue of clarity. I will say I was not expecting the killer's motive, so points for that, Ms. Lanyon. I also note for more modern readers that the women in his story are repellently girly, all dressed pointedly in pink and mincing ever so ladylike through the action. It would demand howls of outrage if a man wrote it...it was uncomfortable to me anyway.

Decent series mysteries with gay leads are rare enough that I recommend it with only mild reservations.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ALL SHE WROTE (Holmes & Moriarity #2)
JOSH LANYON
Justjoshin Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop link)
$18.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Giving screwball mystery a whole deadly new meaning.

A murderous fall down icy stairs is nearly the death of Anna Hitchcock, the much-beloved American Agatha Christie and Christopher Holmes's former mentor. Anna's plea for him to host her annual winter writing retreat touches all Kit's sore spots: traveling, teaching writing classes, and separation from his new lover, J.X. Moriarity.

For J.X., Kit's cancellation of yet another romantic weekend is the death knell of a relationship that has been limping along for months. But that's just as well, right? Kit isn't ready for anything serious and besides, Kit owes Anna far too much to refuse.

Faster than you can say Miss Marple wears boxer shorts, Kit is snooping around Anna's elegant, snowbound mansion in the Berkshires for clues as to who's trying to kill her. A tough task with six amateur sleuths underfoot, six budding writers with a tangled web of dark undercurrents running among them.

Slowly, Kit gets the uneasy feeling that the secret may lie between the pages of someone's fictional past. Unfortunately, a clever killer is one step ahead. And it may be too late for J.X. to ride to the rescue.

Warning: Contains one irascible, forty-year-old mystery writer who desperately needs to get laid, one exasperated thirty-something ex-cop only too happy to oblige, an isolated country manor that needs the thermostat cranked up, various assorted aspiring and perspiring authors, and a merciless killer who may have read one too many mystery novels.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: Note to self: this is a sippin' series, not a bingein' series.

Kit and JX are more in focus now, more dealing with relationship stuff...Kit's just enough older to feel insecure about JX's greater hotness indicating a willingness to, um, stray when offered opportunity to. JX is a romantic, a guy who needs his man to be sweet-nothing-spouting and, if not prone to offering, at least amenable to receiving romantic gestures. That ain't Kit, the sarcastic and self-protective pragmatist.

This is more relatable to me than the establishing of the relationship was...these are ral issues I've dealt with and understand, and make caring about the couplehood of Kit and JX more natural for me as a reader. “I threw a quick look back at J.X. His weary, drawn face reminded me of a young, handsome Don Quixote. I wouldn't have been surprised to spot pieces of broken windmill scattered in the sheets around him.”

That said we're still in a mystery series, so what was the mystery like? “Anyone who wasn't half-stoned on pain meds would have instantly realized what a really bad idea this plan was, but since that didn't include me, I didn't worry about it.”

It was fine. I didn't believe it particularly as it seemed far-fetched but it did the job. “This went beyond talent and hard work, this was gifted. This was the kind of acuity you were either born with or you weren't. Like having perfect pitch or Brad Pitt's cheekbones.”

You've got examples. You like the writing? You want a mystery that's got enough substance to it to keep you involved? Here you go.

MURDER AT THE MATINEE, second quozy Bertie Carroll mystery...good fun!

MURDER AT THE MATINEE
JAMIE WEST
Brabinger Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.42 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Following on from the success of Death on the Pier, gay playwright detective Bertie Carroll returns for the second book in this golden-age-style whodunnit series, set in the exciting world of theatreland in 1930s London.

An unexpected phone call from a rival playwright puts Bertie centre stage in another mystery. Can he help unravel the motive behind a mysterious newspaper advert that boldly declares a murder will take place during a show’s third act? There’s only one problem, there is no murder in the third act of the play!

When a victim is discovered and the police are brought in, Bertie and Inspector Hugh Chapman get thrown awkwardly back together as they both work to find the killer.

The spotlight falls on each suspect in turn and, this time, even Bertie is not above suspicion. But can rivalries and differences be put aside to solve this devious murder?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A riff on Dame Agatha's A Murder is Announced, this quozy story of Bertie Carroll coming to the aid of frenemy Alice, with his...well, his policeman Hugh there to do...rather less than in the first book; and then narrowly miss out on taking a starring role in the murder as a suspect so that comes out okay.

The reason that sounds incoherent is that I felt more at sea this time than last. How is it Hugh, clearly being set up as Bertie's Gentleman Caller, recedes more into the background? I wasn't expecting grand passion, it may be set in the theatre world but it's 1930s London so discretion was all. However Hugh and Bertie weren't as bantering-mates-with-subtext this time. That was disappointing. I suspect we'll get more of the bantering, and maybe even that mooted swim from the first book, in the next one.

I was pretty clear on who killed Alice but really didn't know why until the polyphonic ending unfolded. This was more than enough to satisfy my series-mytery reader brain. The first book's adeptness at scene-setting that transported me, this time, to 1930s London (instead of the first book's Brighton) is very much in evidence again. The author is a theatre professional. It's clear he's also willing to do careful research into the past. It is always a pleasure to read the words of someone who presents the world being evoked with such panache and confidence.

Aside from missing more Hugh-time for Bertie and me, I felt the mystery was satisfying my series-story craving enough to get a solid four stars. I probably wouldn't have been as generous if I'd read this book first, so read Death on the Pier (my review linked above) before this. But don't miss out. Bertie and Hugh will wile away a few hours while you're focused on the made-up problems of fictional people.

THE RAGING STORM, third Matthew Venn mystery from Ann Cleeves

THE RAGING STORM (Two Rivers #3)
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books
$29.00 hardcover, available tomorrow

Rating: 4* of five

Listen to Author Cleeves read the beginning of the book!

The Publisher Says: Ann Cleeves—New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows—returns with the extraordinary third in the Two Rivers series.

Fierce winds, dark secrets, deadly intentions.

When Jem Rosco—sailor, adventurer, and legend—blows into town in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents of Greystone, Devon, are delighted to have a celebrity in their midst. But just as abruptly as he arrived, Rosco disappears again, and soon his lifeless body is discovered in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own.

This is an uncomfortable case for Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. Greystone is a place he visited as a child, a community he parted ways with. Superstition and rumor mix with fact as another body is found, and Matthew finds his judgment clouded. As the winds howl, and Venn and his team investigate, he realizes that no one, including himself, is safe from Scully Cove’s storm of dark secrets.

“A friend of mine once joked that the work of Ann Cleeves is the closest the crime fiction genre comes to evoking ASMR—the euphoric, pleasant, spine-tingling sensation that’s all the rage on YouTube. The books never get too dark, never venture too far into dangerous territory, but aren’t outright cozy, either.”—The New York Times

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Matthew Venn, Ross, and Jen go to the aptly named village of Greystone to investigate the murder of a has-been celebrity sailor. What happens as the investigation progresses is exemplary of why series mysteries appeal to so many of us: the characters do foolish things we know they're going to do and then need each other to fix the problems appertaining thereto; they confront their separate pasts in ways that both expand the seriesverse and explain the case; they think about their spouses, kids, parents, friends, dinner, what they will and won't do to fix the rent in society that murder represents (tracksuit pants? really?). So the reader who's been here with these people before now is definitely in a better position to appreciate the nuances and to find the little signposts the author leaves for us as to how things will play out.

A LOT of people I know would prefer to eat raw frog embryos rather than read a series out of order. I myownself don't care a whole lot these days, as spoilers are a matter of indifference to me so moving back and forth in a series isn't going to cause my circuitry to fry. Also, there aren't that many plots in the storyverse. Once you've read a few thousand books it pays to turn off the analytical part of your brain. Not everyone can.

Lucky me, I can.

So at {a late-ish point past halfway} into this read when the lightbulb went on and the reasons the murder took place got clear I wasn't unhappy but rather very, very impressed because the one thing Matthew needed to know was carefully kept hidden in plain sight. Well done indeed, Author Cleeves.

Should people who haven't read the first two books start here? I think those people would miss some very pleasure-enhancing nuances in the relationships among the team. It would not affect the solution of the puzzle in a serious way but it might reduce the emotional impact of a very big twist late in the story and that would be a shame. The gentrification of the North Dorset coast and its ramifications plays no small part in the puzzle's solution. That was very enjoyable to me. Seeing the way Jen, a single mother, copes with the pressures of motherhood-v-career is vintage Cleeves. It's all tied in to the way the case develops. Matthew's life with his husband Jonathan isn't neglected or foregrounded in this outing (!), but his loving musings about needing Jonathan (warts and all) ring true to me. For any eww-ick homophobes who somehow or another found themselves reading this review, you should really set your search terms to exclude me but also don't fear. Of sexual intimacy there is none. The focus is on the interrelationship of these men who're very different yet very lovingly connected. Not to say that there aren't worries and issues because that'd be really boring. I don't find these stories boring, in large part because Matthew Venn's background reminds me of a dialed-up version of my own, with a cold, judgmental religious-nut mother. That does increase my willingness to invest in the proceedings. This one was no exception.

The character I love to hate, Ross, just never gets out of the nasty, Babbitty little bro-dawg box he's been drawn inside. Thank goodness. I don't want to have to like him after three books learning to despise him, thanks.

A series-reader's pleasure. I think that, if Jimmy Perez and Vera Stanhope are your jam, Matthew Venn might be, too. He's quieter than Vera, more patient than Jimmy, happier than either.

FATAL SHADOWS, twenty years of hooking in new readers

FATAL SHADOWS
JOSH LANYON
Just Joshin'
$5.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five, with minor reservations

The Publisher Says: One sunny morning Los Angeles bookseller and aspiring mystery author Adrien English opens his front door to murder. His old high school buddy (and employee) has been found stabbed to death in a back alley following a loud and very public argument with Adrien the previous evening.

Naturally the cops want to ask Adrien a few questions; they are none too impressed with his answers, and when a few hours later someone breaks into Adrien's shop and ransacks it, the law is inclined to think Adrien is trying to divert suspicion from himself.

Adrien knows better. Adrien knows he is next on the killer's list.

I GOT THIS BOOK ON A 20TH ANNIVERSARY PROMOTION!

My Review: This groundbreaking series started in 2000 at the late, very lamented Gay Men's Press, when there was a great deal less M/M fiction around.

In a lot of ways, that fact explains the unquestioning acceptance of the M/M audience of Jake's waffling about Adrien, for whom he clearly has a lot of feelings...even if he doesn't want to come right out and say so for quite a long time. This approach/avoidance dynamic doesn't play the same way it did in 2000. We'd probably call it "queerbaiting" today, and it really makes me personally feel squirmy, but I totally grandfather this book in under the "the past is a foreign country" rubric. I don't think being lenient with an artifact of a bygone era is always a mistake; more especially so when it's something as influntial as this book and series were in that barely-rememberable time.

I confess that, had the prose been less fun to read, I might be harsher. Author Lanyon is justly celebrated for her skill with dialogue. Funny when that's what the story needs:

“Just shut up and listen.”

“Well, since you ask so nicely...”

There was silence. I listened. He didn’t say anything.

“Are we communicating through the Psychic Hotline or what?”
–and–
“Drink your coffee—people in Africa are sleeping.”

...quietly intense in other moods:

I dug out the powder blue cashmere cardigan my mother Lisa gave me the Christmas before last, pulled on my oldest, softest Levi’s. Comfort clothes; the next best thing to a hug from a warm, living body. Lately there had been a shortage of hugs in my life. Lately there had been a shortage of warm, living bodies.
–and–
“Everything a gay man does makes a political statement. Everything matters: where you bank, where you shop, where you eat. When you hold your lover’s hand in public.”

Some verities are eternal, or so it seems....

What the reader gets by turning on this time machine is a hit of funny, a soupçon of sexy, a helping of gay awakening, wrapped in a pretty darn interesting mystery. I would have LOVED to see this as a TV series in the Aughties or the Teens; now, I just don't think it'd play that well. Not that I wouldn't sample it! But my hopes wouldn't be high.

The price of experiencing things after their time. Still, a very worthwhile read indeed.

MURDER ON MONTE VISTA, 1st Mason Adler post-WWII mystery & MURDER IN UNION STATION, 2nd of the series

MURDER ON MONTE VISTA
DAVID S. PEDERSON (Mason Adler Mysteries #1)
Bold Strokes Books
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s 1946, and on a hot spring night in Phoenix, Arizona, things are only beginning to heat up at the Monte Vista Road home of flamboyant decorator Walter Waverly Wingate.

Private detective Mason T. Adler isn’t thrilled to be turning fifty, and the party Walter throws him makes him even more uncomfortable. Walter has arranged a special birthday present for Mason: a private hour with the handsome, young Henry Bowtrickle in Walter’s upstairs bedroom. But the night turns deadly when his birthday gift turns up murdered.

The room was locked, no way in or out, and only Henry and Mason were inside. Mason Adler is on the case, but he is also a suspect, along with the other assorted party guests who were all downstairs at the time of the stabbing. Or were they?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: What I expect from a first-in-series mystery is simple: Let me know what this world is about; let me in to the characters' interrelatedness; and tell me what kind of crimes we're going to be dealing with.

Can't say I didn't get all those things...a little bit too much of 'em.

The story is of Mason Adler, newly fifty gay man, and his social circle: gal-pal Lydia, long-term frenemy Walter, and cop Emil. Various peripheral people step a measure before us, but no one else really matters. The main thing about a series mystery is the series, not the mystery, and that very much comes true here. By the halfway mark there's no body worth mentioning. Things are slowly unfolding, and the tensions of Mason Adler's life are lying before us prior to a murder accelerating the plot.

Possibly one of the most mean-spirited murders I've ever encountered, spite and envy fueling the circumstances that enable the murder to take place, and then the dead body comes in for a lot of muffled amusement because of how the whole plot evolved. There wasn't much to recommend the dead one, but there was little enough to recommend a lot of these people.

Phoenix, Arizona, is a place I've never, ever wanted to be the few times I've been there. I dislike deserts. I was transported to Phoenix circa 1946 with the author's major characters. It was darn near told in real-time vignettes. I got the sense of the oppressive, horrifying heat, the blasting, battering sunshine, the dreadful helplessness of life in this kind of nightmare before home air conditioning was ubiquitous in the US. (Even with air conditioning I don't want to be in Phoenix or any other desert city. Or town. Or hamlet. Or structure. Or outdoor space.)

So there was that going against the read. The pluses were the economy of the author's characterization. He needn't linger over loving descriptions because he chooses the details that actually matter and doesn't linger on them. He also doesn't clutter up my mental landscape, choosing instead to focus on the telling details. It was a way of bringing me a vivid, textured experience without using a lot of words to do it.

But at the end of the read, I was just...repelled...by the murder's cruel, appalling conception. (Murder will never not be cruel! I'm going on about the *circumstances* not the act.) The person whose life was taken didn't get, in life or after, near enough sympathy. Then there's the person whose idea erected the framework for the murder...I truly do not ever want to see that person in this series again.

I'll certainly move on to the next entry in the series. I won't be likely to revisit this one, though.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

MURDER IN UNION STATION
DAVID S. PEDERSON (Mason Adler Mysteries #2)
Bold Strokes Books
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.8* of five

The Publisher Says: Phoenix, May 6, 1946

At close to midnight in the Union Station baggage room, the air is hot, still, and thick. The eleven forty-five Golden State Limited to Los Angeles is approaching rapidly when the baggage handler, Alfred Brody, notices a stray hound dog sniffing around one of the steamer trunks. The horrific discovery of a body inside the trunk can mean only one thing: there’s a murderer among them.

The young woman was certainly murdered, but who did it, and why? Suspects and motives abound as Private Detective Mason Adler investigates. He soon realizes that nothing, and no one, are what they seem to be as he races to uncover the truth and bring the real murderer to justice without becoming the next victim.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh damn. Walter's back. *shudder*

After the nasty stunt he pulled in the first book, I really don't want to believe it's going to go well for him vis-a-vis this series, if we're going to keep seeing Walter. But the good part is the mystery Author Pederson chose this time is one ripped from the century-old headlines! I was really curious to see what would happen next.

What happens is the requisite amount of banter, a close friendship between a straight woman and a gay guy, bitchy-queen Walter being a complete cow when he wasn't being a tedious crook, oh let's see...hm...oh, Emil the cop being bested by Mason again like Perry Mason beats Hamilton Burger in every contest...um...the murder was done in vain as no one gets away with anything in these books.

I don't think this one took quite as long as the first one, but these aren't propulsive "...and then what happened?!" reads. They're going to take you down the path the detective treads with him, and cause you to get your helper's badge on your efforts and merits. I particularly liked the detail of Mason's car being a 1939 Studebaker Champion, famously a cheap-to-run and stodgy vehicle. The kind of car Uncle Dale drives to Thanksgiving and parks in front of the house despite everyone urging him to take the bus.

By the standards of the day, a real plain-jane-mobile though I myownself would love to have one.

The unmaksing event that Mason stages is very interesting, and not something I expected. Let's just say that Lydia is a useful gal-pal indeed. I was very interested in the book from giddy-up to whoa, and will certainly seek out the next Mason Adler mystery to check in on everyone, make sure they're doing okay.

FADEOUT, fifty-two years of Brandstetter in the world but no films?!

FADEOUT
JOSEPH HANSEN
Soho Syndicate (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Re-Publisher Says: Published fifty years ago, a time when being gay was illegal in 49 out of 50 states, Joseph Hansen’s first Dave Brandstetter novel shattered stereotypes and redefined the Private Eye novel as we know it.

Five decades after its original landmark publication, Joseph Hansen’s Fadeout is as fresh and important as ever. Preceded only by a handful of gay protagonists in crime fiction, Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter, a ruggedly handsome World War II vet with a quick wit, faultless moral compass, and endless confidence, shattered stereotypes and won over a large reading audience, a feat previously considered impossible for queer fiction.

Set in the mid-1960s, Fadeout centers on the disappearance of a southern California radio personality named Fox Olson. A failed writer, Olson finally found success as a beloved folksinger and wholesome country raconteur with a growing national audience. The community is therefore shocked when Olson’s car is found wrecked, having been driven off a bridge and swept away in a fast-moving arroyo on a rainy night. A life insurance claim is filed by Olson’s widow and the company holding the policy sends their best man to investigate. The problem is that Olson’s body was never found. Not in the car. Not further down the river. As Dave Brandstetter begins his investigation he quickly finds that none of it adds up.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Reviews: First, a 2013 rumination:

I've recently completed a re-read of all twelve Brandstetter books. Why the heck not, it beats writing a new ending for my own book, right? Especially a book I thought of as done, but...oh heck, never mind.

My crazy mother bought this book when it came out because she liked mysteries. It was a little too hard-boiled for her, but she got the next three or so because she just loved the writing. When I was about 12, she handed this one to me when I expressed my joy at reading The Maltese Falcon with the offhand remark, "oh well then, this one'll slay ya."

Wow. A gay OLD man! People like me before there was a me!!

That really mattered to me, since there was such a lack of public and accepted gayness in the Austin of 1971. I remember knowing there were gay guys at the University because the sister who went there complained about it. I remember knowing the term "gay" from a friend of that same sister's who used it, and explained it when asked. The sister in question said, "oh geez he means queers, Rich, the faggots who mince around yelling about rights."

My mother is not the only judgmental and nasty woman I grew up with.

Well, that sort of interchange made Brandstetter all the more pleasurable for me to read! I loved him for being himself, despite his own father's disapproval, and for being a widower...a relationship ends before the series begins, and it was a revelation to me that such a relationship was *possible*. What a wonderful man Joseph Hansen must be, I thought, to create this unicorn of a character.

As the mystery unfolds, Dave Brandstetter does too. He learns so much about the victim, and so much of that resonates with him...Dave just can't stop the grieving he's going through for his dead love from connecting him to the people in his life, even as he makes the honorable choice not to take comfort that's offered to him by someone even more vulnerable than he is.

What I know now as someone older than the old man I thought Dave was in the book...Hansen knew what he was talking about when the subject is grief and grieving. Dave's pain made me weep as a kid. It does so much more to the grief-veteran old-man me...makes me sit, shocked, as I'm taken in to this most personal and intimate of places. Sex is less intimate than a person sharing this passage with you. As a re-reader, I had my initial youthful response in mind. Then the reality hit, and the impact was profound.

When there's writing like this, storytelling like this, out there in the world, why are so many people gobbling down so much crap?

My present-day response to re-reading this glory of a noir story:

Revisiting this read still more decades later, I am much more impressed with Author Hansen's feat of derring-do in writing the absolutely ordinary Dave as a queer gent of a certain age. These are excellent California Noir novels, as Michael Nava says in his Introduction, and it is homophobia and nothing else that keeps Hansen off the lists of the great practitioners of this art.

I thank you, Soho Syndicate, for republishing the series. Thanks, Edelweiss+, for the DRC. Most of all, and most heartfelt indeed, are the thanks I offer to my forerunner Joseph Hansen for holding the spiky branches back and showing my ever-searching eyes the safest path to being a good man was the honest one.

When all is said and done, when this mystery is...not solved, exactly...resolved, let's say, one feels that Justice has been served and the world's wicked, awful ways aren't triumphant when it really mattered. This time.

THE MATTHEW VENN MYSTERIES: THE HERON'S CRY second of Ann Cleeves's "Two Rivers" mysteries

THE HERON'S CRY
ANN CLEEVES (Two Rivers #2)
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
Kindle edition on sale for $2.99

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an elaborately staged murder—Dr Nigel Yeo has been fatally stabbed with a shard of one of his glassblower daughter's broken vases.

Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He's a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband.

Then another body is found—killed in a similar way. Matthew soon finds himself treading carefully through the lies that fester at the heart of his community and a case that is dangerously close to home.

DI Matthew Venn returns in The Heron's Cry, in Ann Cleeves powerful next novel, proving once again that she is a master of her craft.

Here's Author Cleeves reading a piece of this book in the landscape in which it's set.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: While I'm a fan of Author Cleeves's writing, I'm also a fan of her mystery chops...the way a story comes together from the bits and bobs she makes it out of. In this entry into the Two Rivers series, DI Venn has murders and suicides and some extremely upsetting issues to deal with.

Oh, and his husband invited the Gorgon who gave birth to him, then rejected him for being queer, round to theirs for her birthday. Sunday roast, yorkie puds, cream-embellinshed birthday cake...champagne even!

How he didn't pass out from the stress I do not know.

But family drama is always good for a mystery. Put three families under stress and, well...it multiplies. In this book, in most approved Cleevesian fashion, we see Lucy and Maurice from the book before; we visit several beauty spots marred by tragedy; Jonathan goes whole-hearted and unthinking into best-friend mode when he should stop and think a minute; Matthew, well, he thinks himself into many corners and gets out when Jen and Ross need him to fix things for them.

And, in the end, when the deaths are finally apportioned to their causal agents, he's there to be thanked by those who have lived and cursed by those whose guilt was narrowly revealed. Jen, god bless her cotton socks, is a good friend. And Ross, a seriously bratty entitled goofball, might be salvageable yet. A bit like Sandy in the Shetland mysteries, it's not like he's a bad person just bad at self-control and self-reflection.

But possibly the most grim and revolting parts of this death-fest are not to be spoiled. I want y'all to experience the, to me at least, appalling and nauseating manner in which some people choose to conduct themselves without any prior warning. When you come across the information I'm referring to, you will know immediately. To my disgust, this is not something Author Cleeves dreamt up. It is a very real thing. It just...words can not do justice to the *fury* it inspires in me. I had to research the reality of it, and then re-write my review several times before I realized I can't say anything at all about it.

I hope it goes without saying that you are never, ever alone if you need help with suicidal ideation or emotional crisis. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline number is 1-800-273-8255. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline fields calls 24/7 for anyone with suicidal thoughts or who are in crisis. You could also get US help by texting "HEAL" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

Web searches for other countries return the same kind of information in seconds. Take that action before taking any other actions. Please. It can not be said often enough: That investment of mere seconds can do you no harm.

I'm sure there are many out there who, like me, very much appreciate the severity of the mental health crisis in the world today. This story is one that will cause a goodly number of its readers to think about issues that they might not wish to think deeply about...but really very much should. I hope the way the story is told will help you, if you're simply unaware of it, to process the delicacy of the hold many people maintain on their relationship to life. Please, even if you think you know, check on the reality of those in your orbit who strike you as troubled.

(And Ross gets off too easily in the end!)

THE MATTHEW VENN MYSTERIES: THE LONG CALL starts Ann Cleeves' new "Two Rivers" mystery series

THE LONG CALL
ANN CLEEVES (Two Rivers #1)
Minotaur Books
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

WINNER OF THE 2019 AGATHA AWARD FOR BEST CONTEMPORARY NOVEL!

SOON TO BE AN EVENT SERIES ON ITV/BRITBOX!

The Publisher Says: In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father's funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.

Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death.

The case calls Matthew back to the people and places of his past, as deadly secrets hidden at their hearts are revealed, and his new life is forced into a collision course with the world he thought he'd left behind.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM MY LIBRARY. BE SURE TO USE YOUR LIBRARIES, FOLKS! THEY NEED US.

My Review: Don't you hate being Right? It's the police's job, though, isn't it; they have to be Right or the consequences are so dire for so many people...innocent people who don't know their trust has been abused.

And that's why we read mysteries! They're ma'at in action, aren't they? Small demonstrations that when our Negative Confessions come before Osiris, Hapi won't need to open those toothy crocodilian jaws and end our existence. And I'm using ancient Egyptian examples for a very specific reason.

Matthew Venn is a new series character for mystery veteran Cleeves, she of Vera and Jimmy Perez (Shetland) fame. She's chosen England's most beautiful county (and her own native ground), North Devon, for her setting. She's decided the twenty-first century's not going to take her down without a fight, so Matthew's gay, and a lapsed member of one of the seemingly innumerable weirdo strict-constructionist christian sects. His involvement in matters churchly having perforce lapsed when he came out, he doesn't have contact with his former friends despite being back among them in his posting as a Detective Inspector. He does have a lot of community ties, though, as he's married to the man responsible for the local arts-and-social-services venue.

And now that sense of place is established....

Murder and maleficent doings are afoot.

People who are possessed of money mistake its power for their own. They imagine that, because they can push money into open palms, they're the ones with Power. But the only ones without money, but who want it, are the only ones whose hands are open enough to close their minds, their eyes, their hearts. Those who don't care, whose worlds don't revolve around the money-god, are a sight more open to concerns that aren't important to the obsessed.

He was a man who’d turned his personal likes and dislikes into a moral code; because he didn’t enjoy spending money in the Woodyard cafe, there was something morally suspect about the people who did. The Brethren had been much the same. Matthew thought they’d created a God in their own image, hard, cold and inflexible.

It's this dichotomy that Author Cleeves mines for the plot of this tale. It is about power, and its abuse, and the only person who won't stay quiet about it is the one whose hands aren't outstretched for more, but in finger-pointing accusation. The moneyed, the influential, can't have that and they rally around the problem of their own positions, their absolutely justified and necessary access to More.

Looking at the assembled group, the families and the ardent young converts, Matthew had had a sudden understanding, as the early evening sunshine shone through the dusty glass, a vision close to a religious experience: this was all a sham. The earnest elderly women in their mushroom-shaped hats, the bluff good-natured men – they were all deluding themselves. They were here for their own reasons, for the power trip or because they’d grown up with the group and couldn’t let go.

It's such a shame that some Others must die to maintain it.

As always, Author Cleeves will lead you a merry chase and make your head spin with information you think could be important but...and then there's...what about...it's her stock in trade. All those Vera Stanhope and Jimmy Perez novels aren't accidental! But here's my beef with this book...like all Author Cleeves' work, there is a startling amount of sexlessness here. Matthew and Jonathan aren't even allowed a cuddle (British sense) on the page...there's no suggestion of sex in any of her books. Of the healthy sort.

All night, he’d been aware of Jonathan sleeping beside him, motionless, the gentle breaths not moving his body. Jonathan had a gift for sleep that Matthew envied more than anything. More than his husband’s easy confidence, his courage, his ability to laugh off hurt and insults. Now Matthew was alone in bed and that rarely happened. Usually he was the first up.

And that continues here. I quite strongly wish she'd move past this, what? reticence? distaste? whatever it is because this is new territory for her. These are the first gay people in her books! Use this freshness as a chance to stop pathologizing sex. Matthew needs Jonathan's comforting bodily presence as any husband who's just been through a physical and emotional ordeal would. But he isn't granted it. And it's true none of her other sleuths are, either, which is why I'm bringing it up now.

When Matthew's police work results in a resolution for this case that I must say I dismissed as improbable when it occurred to me, I was surprised. Author Cleeves brought in motives I didn't expect. She made me think, hard, about how she'd placed her tells and her Maguffins. If that isn't a sheer, unadulterated pleasure for an old, experienced bird-dogger, I don't know what is.

Book two of the series comes out tomorrow! You *will* want to get one. It's a new-series Cleeves mystery...how could you possibly resist?