Padme's Library: 🌈⏳Throwback Thursday's Time Machine⏳🌈: The Dark Tide by Josh Lanyon

Thursday, May 29, 2025

🌈⏳Throwback Thursday's Time Machine⏳🌈: The Dark Tide by Josh Lanyon

Summary:

Adrien English #5

To say goodbye is to die a little...

Like recovering from heart surgery beneath the gaze of his over-protective family isn't exasperating enough, someone keeps trying to break into Adrien English's bookstore. What is this determined midnight intruder searching for?

When a half-century old skeleton tumbles out of the wall in the midst of Cloak and Dagger Bookstore's renovation, Adrien turns to hot and handsome ex-lover Jake Riordan -- now out-of-the closet and working as a private detective.

Jake is only too happy to have reason to stay in close contact with Adrien, but there are more surprises in Adrien's past than either one of them expects -- and one of them may prove hazardous to Jake's own heart.

Original Review 2013:

Another great installment in this series and it has left me hungry for more. Thru searching a 50yr old murder, recovering from life-altering surgery, and a couple visits from his past, Adrien has a couple epiphanies of his own, but is it too late?

2nd Re-Read Review 2016:

Even better the 3rd time around. I just love the dynamic between Adrien and Jake, I have throughout the whole series but now that Jake is officially out of the closet, the way the two are with each other is just priceless. As for the mystery, it's a great blend of history and contemporary that had me enthralled even though I remembered the whos, whats, and wheres. Great from beginning to end.

Overall Series Audiobook Review 2019:

Adrien with an "e", what can I say that I haven't already said? Nothing really because I absolutely adore Adrien and Jake. Yes, there are multiple times I want to whack Jake upside the head but he's learning, albeit slowly sometimes but still learning. There's heartbreak, there's joy, there's murder, and well there's plenty of love(even if it takes Jake a little longer to accept).

All but the final Christmas novella is narrated by Chris Patton and his voice is perfect for these two. I couldn't imagine listening to anyone else bring life to the pair but then when I listened to So This is Christmas, read by Kale Williams, he too is . . . well for the lack of a better word(and not to sound redundant😉) . . . brilliant. Obviously there is a difference between the two narrators but since Adrien and Jake are settled, or as settled as they can be considering Adrien's knack for stumbling into mayhem, which changes people and so the difference in narrators kind of reflects that I thought. So I say spot on to all involved bringing Adrien English and Jake Riordan to life.

RATING:

Reaction hit me, and I slid down the wall and dialed 911.

I was having trouble catching my breath as I waited — and waited — for the 911 operator, and I hoped to hell I wasn’t having a heart attack. My heart had been damaged by rheumatic fever when I was sixteen. A recent bout of pneumonia had worsened my condition, and I’d been in line for surgery even before getting shot three weeks earlier. Everything was under control now, and according to my cardiologist, I was making terrific progress. The ironic thing about the surgery and the news that I was evidently going to make old bones after all was that I felt mortal in a way that I hadn’t for the last fifteen years.

Tomkins pussyfooted up to delicately head-butt me.

“Hi,” I said.

He blinked his wide, almond-shaped, green-gold eyes at me and meowed. He had a surprisingly quiet meow. Not as annoying as most cats. Not that I was an expert — nor did I plan on becoming one. I was only loaning a fellow bachelor my pad. The cat — kitten, really — was also convalescing. He’d been mauled by a dog three weeks ago. His bounce back was better than mine.

I stroked him absently as he wriggled around and tried to bite my fingers. I guessed there was truth to the wisdom about petting a cat to lower your blood pressure, because I could feel my heart rate slowing, calming — which was pretty good, considering how pissed off I was getting at being kept on hold in the middle of an emergency.

Granted, it wasn’t much of an emergency at this point. My intruder was surely long gone.

I chewed my lip, listened once more to the message advising me to stay on the line and help would soon be with me. Assuming I’d still be alive to take that call.

I hung up and dialed another number. A number I had memorized long ago. A number that seemingly would require acid wash to remove from the memory cells of my brain.

As the phone rang on the other end, I glanced across at the clock on the bookshelf. Three oh three in the morning. Well, here was a test of true friendship.

“Riordan,” Jake managed in a voice like raked gravel.

“Uh…hey.”

“Hey.” I could feel him making the effort to push through the fog of sleep. He rasped, “How are you?”

Pretty civil given the fact that I hadn’t spoken to him for nearly two weeks and was choosing three in the morning to reopen the lines of communication.

I found myself instinctively straining to hear the silence behind him; was someone there with him? I couldn’t hear over the rustle of bed linens.

“I’m okay. Something happened just now. I think someone tried to break in.”

“You think?” And he was completely alert. I could hear the covers tossed back, the squeak of bedsprings.

“Someone did try to break in. He took off, but —”

“You’re back at the bookstore?”

“Yeah. I got home late this afternoon.”

“You’re there alone?”

Thank God he didn’t say it like everyone else had. Alone? As though it was out of the question. As though I was far too ill and helpless to be left to my own devices. Jake simply looked at it from a security perspective.

“Yeah.”

“Did the security alarm go off?”

“No.”

“Did you call it in?”

“I called nine-one-one. They put me on hold.”

“At three o’clock in the morning?” He was definitely on his feet and moving, dressing, it sounded like, and I felt a wave of guilty relief. Regardless of how complicated our relationship was — and it was pretty complicated — there was no one I knew who was better at dealing with this kind of thing. Whatever this kind of thing was.

Which I guessed said more than I realized right there.

Jake’s voice was crisp. “Hang up and call nine-one-one again. Stay on the line with them. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I said gruffly, “Thanks, Jake.”

Just like that. I had called, and he was coming to the rescue. Unexpectedly, a wave of emotion — reaction — hit me. One of the weird aftereffects of my surgery. I struggled with it as he said, “I’m on my way,” and disconnected.

Saturday Series Spotlight / Funny Thing Happened . . .

Josh Lanyon

Bestselling author of over sixty titles of classic Male/Male fiction featuring twisty mystery, kickass adventure and unapologetic man-on-man romance, JOSH LANYON has been called "the Agatha Christie of gay mystery."

Her work has been translated into eleven languages. The FBI thriller Fair Game was the first male/male title to be published by Harlequin Mondadori, the largest romance publisher in Italy. Stranger on the Shore (Harper Collins Italia) was the first M/M title to be published in print. In 2016 Fatal Shadows placed #5 in Japan's annual Boy Love novel list (the first and only title by a foreign author to place on the list).

The Adrien English Series was awarded All Time Favorite Male Male Couple in the 2nd Annual contest held by the Goodreads M/M Group (which has over 22,000 members). Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery, and the first ever recipient of the Goodreads Favorite M/M Author Lifetime Achievement award.

Josh is married and they live in Southern California.