Adrien English Mysteries by Josh Lanyon

TITLE: Adrien English Mysteries
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 109k)
GENRE: Gay mystery
COST: $6.99

A compilation of two shorter works, “Fatal Shadows,” and “A Dangerous Thing.” In “Fatal Shadows,” bookseller Adrien English finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation when his longtime friend and part-time employee is brutally stabbed. The police suspect him – a crime of passion, they say, since both men were gay. But then other bodies start showing up, someone is stalking Adrien, and Detective Riordan keeps popping up unexpectedly. Adrien’s got his hands full. Let’s hope his heart holds up.

“A Dangerous Thing” picks up two months later. Adrien and in-the-closet Jake have a relationship. Kind of. He’s also got writer’s block. Wanting to escape from situations he doesn’t understand, Adrien goes up to the ranch he inherited from his grandmother and finds it with a dope-dealing caretaker, an unauthorized archaeological dig, and Native American mythology about werewolves haunting the caves. He’s shocked when Jake comes up as well, but maybe some time together is what they need to figure out this thing between them. If somebody doesn’t kill one or the both of them first.

I actually had the third book of this series marked down to read after I read the author’s noir story, Snowball in Hell. Then, Jorrie Spencer/Joely Skye suggested I read them in order, so off I went to buy this compilation. And boy, am I glad I did.

All that promise I saw in the noir story paid off. The sharp, spare writing is still there, but now it’s modernized, with cutting humor, careful characterizations, and close plotting there for the picking. Next to romance, mystery is my second favorite genre. I do love the thrill of the hunt, the search for clues, the action when the hero or heroine starts to put it all together. Lanyon pays it off here in spades, and he does it in a fresh enough voice for me to feel like I’m reading something completely new.

His hero, Adrien English, is a bookseller on hard times. He owns a specialty mystery shop in LA, one he purchased using the bulk of his inheritance. He also has the misfortune of having a bum heart. A lengthy illness in high school weakened it and leaves him prone to attacks when life is anything less than calm. Even worse for Adrien, it looks like that’s going to be the norm from now on. Trouble follows him like horny toms after a cat in heat. Too bad the poor guy isn’t getting any ever since his last boyfriend left him, unable to commit.

Detective Jake Riordan is introduced in the first story as one of the cops investigating his friend’s murder, but the reader learns halfway through that this is a man who is shut up airtight inside the closet. He likes women; he just likes men more. He hates to admit it, though, and he hates even more that he’s got a soft spot for Adrien. This thread plays through into the second book, when poor Adrien doesn’t have a clue what kind of relationship they even have, when after two months, they’ve only had one really awkward kiss and lots of private, one-sided conversations. With the books in 1^st person, Adrien’s POV, it’s hard to get a bead on Jake. Even at the end, I’m unsure how I feel about him. His uncertainty about his sexuality screams off the page, which makes me as uncomfortable as it makes Adrien.

However, these aren’t romances. These are mysteries. I can forgive my somewhat ambivalent feelings about Jake. In the end, this is about Adrien, how I feel about him, and how well the plot works.

And it does. Both of them do. They move along at a clipped pace, with just enough clues and red herrings thrown in along the way to make the endings both work and make sense. I guessed the killer early on in the first book, but I enjoyed it more than the second. That was based purely on my preference for the characters in the first story.

But Adrien is the glue that holds the stories together. How can I not love a guy who makes me smile with such observations as, “Hey, if God had intended me to cook he wouldn’t have created Trader Joe’s.”?

Readability	9/10 – Sharp, simple writing that reads like a smooth, aged whiskey.
Hero	8/10 – Flawed but fabulous. My only complaint is that the 1st person POV sometimes means the angst gets a little heavy for the stories.
Plot	8/10 – Clever and interesting, though I did manage to figure out the first one far in advance.
Entertainment value	9/10 – Sucks you in and never lets a go. I have a new author on my autobuy list.
World building	9/10 – English’s LA has a noir feeling that just adds to the whole sleuth atmosphere.
TOTAL:	43/50