The Dark Horse by Josh Lanyon

TITLE: The Dark Horse
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 36k)
GENRE: Gay suspense erotic romance
COST: $4.99

Actor Sean Fairchild has lived the last year in fear of the stalker casting long shadows in his day-to-day life. Though evidence now points to the stalker being dead, postcards in the dead man’s handwriting still show up at Sean’s door. Does that mean he’s alive? Sean doesn’t know. His lover, Lieutenant Dan Moran, doesn’t think so. Dan’s job for the last month has been to protect Sean, and just because they’re lovers now, he doesn’t intend to stop. His protectiveness annoys Sean’s manager and ex-lover Steve, but Sean isn’t sure what to think. He just wants to get back to his real life. Somebody clearly doesn’t want that to happen…

I was the kid who still had Easter candy when school started. I didn’t want to eat that last bit of my chocolate rabbit because I knew when I did, that was it. No more. I had to wait until the next year to get another one. That’s kind of what happened with this particular story. I’ve had it for a little while, but I set it aside, saving it as long as I could. It’s the last of Josh Lanyon’s backlist that I hadn’t read. Now, I’m all caught up, and I’m all anxious about having to wait for the next one.

Lanyon utilizes a suspense device with finely honed expertise in this – the unreliable narrator. Like his other work, the story is told in 1^st person, this time from Sean’s POV. As a narrator, Sean has a lot of things working to destroy his credibility. First of all, he’s an actor. Their primary purpose is to pretend. Secondly, he’s got an emotionally unstable history. He’s been in residential psychiatric care twice – once for nine months – and he’s had serious suicide attempts. Third, he’s spent the last year of his life living in growing fear of this stalker who’s after him. So trusting him to be the voice of reason in this? Extremely, extremely difficult. You're never completely sure if what he's experiencing is genuine, or a product of too much stress, or something else entirely. I felt every nuance of fear, of paranoia, of doubt that Sean did. With the creation of such a character to tumble through the story with, I would be hard-pressed to consider any as effective as Sean.

What this did for the story as a whole was make it utterly effective as suspense. Its length prevents it from introducing too many extraneous characters and still keep the characterizations realistic and cohesive, so the cast from which to pull your suspects for who is actually after Sean – if somebody actually is – is limited. Some readers will likely figure it out before the end. Personally, while I had my suspicions, I was dragged into Sean’s paranoia deeply enough to give the ending a real impact.

As always, Lanyon’s spare and compelling prose makes reading his stories effortless. There’s an added layer in this particular story as he mirrors themes from The Charioteer, the book which Sean adores and covets a lead role for in the movie adaptation, with those of Sean and his circle of friends and acquaintances. It’s done seamlessly, so much so that you don’t even know it until Sean points it out in the end. What he’s also done is make his erotic scenes actually mean something within the context of the story. Every scene is another step in the romance – which actually takes a definite back seat to the suspense aspects – so rather than titillate, they transcend the norm for most in this genre.

Is the story perfect? No, but that stems from Lanyon being a little too good at what he’s done. Sean’s constant paranoia grates slightly by two-thirds of the way through the story, and Dan’s stoicism gets a little frustrating (because Sean is frustrated with it, do you see the vicious cycle here?). That doesn’t stop me from whole-heartedly recommending it, though. You don’t have to be a Lanyon fan to fall for this. You simply have to enjoy quality writing and tight suspense.

Readability	9/10 – Deceptively simple, sucking you in without you even realizing it
Hero #1	8/10 – Battered and fragile, with a claustrophobic voice that mirrors his unbalanced state of mind
Hero #2	8/10 – Solid and dependable without seeming boring
Entertainment value	8/10 – A long, downward slope of tension that hooks you along for the breathtaking ride
World building	9/10 – Lanyon is a pro at immersing his readers into realistic, contemporary worlds.
TOTAL:	42/50