Perfection...this book was perfect...for me.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record...Josh Lanyon is BRILLIANT!
This book had everything that I love in a mystery. Glamorous people doing suspicious things, blackmail, missing people, tragic heroes, dark dark characters, foolish boys and silly women who make all kinds of trouble, and webs that kept on spinning and spinning until every damn person looked liked the killer.
It's LA in the 40s, a rich man's son turns up dead in a tar pit...Lt. Matt Spain is at the scene...the reporter standing next to him, a Nathan Doyle, knows the victim...that can't be a good thing.
The feel of this book, the words, the imagery, it was all Hollywood Noir, all I could see were Bogarts and Bacalls drinking whiskey for breakfast in a haze of cigarette smoke. The mystery was perfect...and then there was Matt and Nathan.
These men broke my heart...The 40s were not a good time for two men to fall in love...Homosexuality was a mental illness, a sick thing.
Living with that guilt and self-loathing was destroying Nathan, he was self-destructive and careless, a shell, tired of who he was, so very desperate to feel close to someone, anyone. He was in very low place...
Matt is a widower, and had loved his wife, but he knows what he feels sexually towards other men. As soon as he sees Doyle at that crime scene, he knows he's in trouble.
There were some moments in this book between Matt and Nathan that were so heartbreakingly beautiful, they left me breathless. I wanted to slap sense into Nathan and then hold him and let him cry, and Matt....I'm rambling :)
I loved it. Just loved it.
I will read the next one and the one after that.