Police Procedural Meets the Otherworld in Compelling Romance

I don't often run into the spiritual in either gay romances or police procedurals, but Lloyd Meeker has successfully melded the two to create an interesting and thought-provoking m/m romance in The Companion.  Here's a snippet from my review that went live today at All About Romance:

Spiritual healing and a brutal murder intersect in this look at two men's journey to love. If this sounds very touchy-feely, it should because the story is partly a police procedural and partly an elegant journey into the world of the unexplainable.

Daka Shepherd Bucknam is not only rich and handsome - except for three red circular growths on his neck - but he's also perfectly content helping men reach their full sexual potential - and thereby happiness - in his practice. He's particularly pleased with his protege Stef, an Oklahoma farm boy, who's showing great progress.

When Stef's brutally murdered and Shepherd becomes a prime suspect, however, his world crashes around him, particularly since he's attracted to LAPD Detective Marco Fidanza who views Shepherd's profession through skeptical eyes.

Because he doesn't think that Marco is doing enough to solve Stef's murder and he is convinced Marco is looking in all the wrong places, Shepherd sets out to find the killer despite having no police training and suffering from nightmares predicting his own death.

Meeker skillfully intertwines an interesting love story between two totally different kinds of men and the sordid crime investigation while delving into the murky waters of past lives and reincarnation as well as fortune telling and auras. The spiritual as personified by Shepherd and the material in Marco can only be whole when they come together.

Read the rest of the review at All About Romance.

Expect Radical Change When Coming Home

Z. A. Maxfield has been a favorite writer of mine for quite a while, so I was eager to see her newest which I'm happy to report incorporates much of what I've come to love about her writing as well as new flourishes.

My review of Maxfield's Home the Hard Way was posted at The Romance Reviews today, and here's a peek at what it says:

Old secrets turn to murder as a disgraced police detective returns home to find old friends aren't quite as he remembered them and that love is lurking in the shadows for him.

Former Seattle detective Dare Buckley comes back to his hometown with his tail between his legs after a grave misstep in judgment which nearly let a killer go free. On the surface, the town looks the same as when he left it after his father killed himself. Shy, retiring Finn Fowler is still being bullied by Bill Fraser, who is now one of Dare's fellow cops.

Once again, Dare is attracted to Finn and wants to protect him as he did before Dare's mother moved the family away to start a new life. But Finn has his hands full taking care of his dying aunt who was more mother to him than his slut of a mother was. As if that weren't enough, Finn is working two jobs, one at the local big box store and managing his aunt's beauty salon. Although he'd like to, Finn doesn't have time for Dare.

When a woman drops dead in the beauty salon, no one thinks it's murder until other mysterious deaths occur. As Dare begins to tear the rose-colored glasses from his eyes, he realizes that not only isn't Finn the man he once knew, neither are many of his other neighbors in town.

This is a typical Z.A. Maxfield story in that neither the plot nor the characters are what they seem on the surface and the complicated ties between the various relationships can easily be misinterpreted by someone who doesn't look below the surface.

Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

Quirky Tale of Two Law Enforcement Officers

Author A. J. Thomas doesn't write the standard gay romance which is one of the things I enjoy most about her writing.  In this book she follows two men last seen in her A Casual Weekend Thing. 

If you're following her, as I am, then you too might be having trouble deciding which of her three well-written and highly interesting books is the best. 

At this point, even though their star ratings are nearly the same, I'm going with Sex & Sourdough just because of the difference between the two men and the descriptions of the Appalachian Trail, descriptions that actually made me want to go hiking!

At any rate, here's an excerpt from my review of her latest book that was posted on The Romance Review this morning:

A.J. Thomas carefully explores the unlikely relationship between two law enforcement officers--one with family ties to an organized crime group that the other's agency is trying to shut down--in this riveting police procedural.

When drug lord Alejandro Munoz visits his gay cousin Ray Delgado, asking him to look into the disappearance of Alejandro's sister Sophie, Ray knows something bigger is up. A police detective, Ray discovers that college computer science major Sophie has stolen a big chunk of Alejandro's ill-gotten gains, money he needs to pay an even bigger drug lord.

As he's trying to figure out where Sophie is and with whom she's staying, Ray runs into federal agent Elliot Belkamp, with whom he had a fling in the previous book, A Casual Weekend Thing. The sparks between them are still flying, and even though they try to resist, they cross paths so often that they end up together much of the time.

While Elliot is out to anyone who asks, Ray, because of his Hispanic background and his family ties to organized crime, is still deeply in the closet and declaring he's straight, not gay. But as he and Elliot often end up having sex, Ray is forced to admit to himself he's bisexual and hope that if his sister, his closest sibling, finds out, she won't abandon him.
Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

Comings and Goings

My review of Heartbreak Trail can be found on today's AAR.  (See link at left for review.)  Author Shirley Kennedy must have read quite a few homesteader diaries and letters to come up with the details she uses in her gritty recreation of a trip across America in a covered wagon.  As we complain about the delays in airports, it's good to remember that there once was a much worse way to travel cross country and thousands of people did it with not nearly the number of complaints.

I sent off reviews to Booklist for Demons Prefer Blondes and Kiss of Snow last night.  Demons has probably one of the snarkiest heroines I've ever read.  It's a talky book, and I wondered at times whether the war between one of the Devil's princes and the fallen angel sent to kill him would ever begin or if it would just be talked to death.  But I know that many younger readers (younger than me, that is!) enjoy snarky, so I didn't pan it.

Kiss of Snow, on the other hand, was a wonderful read.  I thought I was burned out on shape-changing