REVIEW, Death of a Pirate King by Josh Lanyon

Prod dets

Death of a Pirate King

Series: Adrien English Mysteries #4

Pub:  2008, MLR Press

Author: Josh Lanyon

Genre: contemporary mystery

Format: ibook; 236p w/ 25 chapters

Age Range: adult

                        Synopsis

Gay bookseller and reluctant amateur sleuth Adrien English's writing career is suddenly taking off. His first novel, Murder Will Out, has been optioned by notorious Hollywood actor Paul Kane. But when murder makes an appearance at a dinner party, who should be called in but Adrien's former lover, handsome closeted detective Jake Riordan, now a Lieutenant with LAPD -- which may just drive Adrien's new boyfriend, sexy UCLA professor Guy Snowden, to commit a murder of his own

                   Thoughts

Set two years after the first book, this one opens us into the party that is set up for Adrien and his book to be opted as a film. When two paragraphs into it, I believe, a guy keels over and the story begins.

I found that this book took on a more determined ‘crime’ line, where we say, or gathered, from the beginning who the kill was, and nothing threw the investigation said otherwise. You just had to wait until the end to find out why.

Well, no, Adrien pretty much figured it out.

I don’t know, I found that even as I was reading I kept on wanting to skip forward to the end, I wanted it to be over. I wanted to know that what I thought was right, even though I would have bet my life on the fact that I was right. I wanted to know. And yet I couldn’t seem to miss a moment.

Lanyon has a way of making you want more. Making you crave.

But this book it seemed my main focus was on the relationship. On how they went. On what was happening in his life. On how this book was going to be set up so that the end on made sense.

But saying this, even though that was the part in the story that I craved. That made it interesting, that kept me reading, I couldn’t not read the rest. I couldn’t not sit through and understand and nod in agreement as Adrien went along and figured everything out.

I felt that Guy was as represented, and as there, in this book as the last. Which is to say, even though they were lovers, I never felt the connection. Just that he was a character that need to get out of the way.

I’m not sure if this was because I know what’s going down in the last book. I know—sorry, I’ve strong feelings on how the series itself is going to end (I could be wrong, but then…what an ending). So, I was saying, that I’m not sure if it’s my own forward reading that’s made it impossible to really care about this character as anything interesting, and something that’s lasting, when it’s highly likely not to be.

Or if it was the brilliant working of Lanyon, that helped pick Guy in the light that Adrien saw him in. because I’m not imagining the gap between then when their skin to skin.

Anyway, it’s irrelevant and it’s the part that I keep close to heart when it came up, because, to be perfectly honest, even though I truly like the series, and that I couldn’t not skip a bit, I wasn’t truly invested, nor caring about the story.

There just wasn’t anything really mysterious about the plot line, no more than any show I have watched.

But I read it all, and that, for a book that held no hold of me, mystery wise, is something truly interesting and investing in Lanyon’s writing ability.

Series

Fatal Shadow, A Dangerous Thing, The Hell You Say, Death of a Pirate King, The Dark Tide

☼☼