Adrien English #1
Naturally the cops want to ask Adrien a few questions; they are none too impressed with his answers, and when a few hours later someone breaks into Adrien's shop and ransacks it, the law is inclined to think Adrien is trying to divert suspicion from himself.
Adrien knows better. Adrien knows he is next on the killer's list.
Los Angeles bookseller and aspiring mystery author Adrien English finds himself the prime suspect when his employee—an old high school buddy (and more)—is found stabbed to death in a back alley following a loud and public argument the previous evening.
Naturally the cops want to ask Adrien a few questions—and when a few hours later someone breaks into Cloak and Dagger Bookstore, the law is inclined to think Adrien is trying to divert suspicion from himself.
Adrien knows better. Adrien knows he's next on the killer's list.
Very intriguing mystery. Well written characters, some you love to love, love to hate, and hate to love.
2nd Re-Read Review 2016:
Absolutely brilliant! Even knowing the outcome, it just doesn't get much better than Adrien English and Jake Riordan.
Absolutely brilliant! Even knowing the outcome, it just doesn't get much better than Adrien English and Jake Riordan.
Overall 4th Re-Read Review 2018:
I really don't know what I can say about Adrien English that I haven't already said but I'll try😉😉. On paper Adrien "with an 'e'" English and Jake Riordan shouldn't work, they not only shouldn't work they really shouldn't even be in the same city but they do work. Yes, you'll want to strangle Jake on more than one occasion but truth is he is protective and loving(okay the loving bit happens eventually but acceptance of oneself doesn't have a set timetable) he is just what Adrien needs and Adrien is exactly what Jake needs, even if their timing needs a little tweaking. The mysteries are amazing and even knowing the outcome with no surprises anymore, I am still on the edge-of-my-seat and can't-put-it-down enthralled when it comes to this series. This one has become a required annual read for me and I don't foresee a time when it won't be.
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:
Author Bio:
Series
I really don't know what I can say about Adrien English that I haven't already said but I'll try😉😉. On paper Adrien "with an 'e'" English and Jake Riordan shouldn't work, they not only shouldn't work they really shouldn't even be in the same city but they do work. Yes, you'll want to strangle Jake on more than one occasion but truth is he is protective and loving(okay the loving bit happens eventually but acceptance of oneself doesn't have a set timetable) he is just what Adrien needs and Adrien is exactly what Jake needs, even if their timing needs a little tweaking. The mysteries are amazing and even knowing the outcome with no surprises anymore, I am still on the edge-of-my-seat and can't-put-it-down enthralled when it comes to this series. This one has become a required annual read for me and I don't foresee a time when it won't be.
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:
Cops before breakfast. Before coffee even. As if Mondays weren't bad enough.
I stumbled downstairs, unlocked the glass front doors, shoved back the ornate security gate, and let them in: two plainclothes detectives.
They identified themselves with a show of badges. Detective Chan was older, a little paunchy, a little rumpled, smelling of Old Spice and cigarettes as he brushed by me. The other one, Detective Riordan, was big and blonde, with a neo-Nazi haircut and tawny eyes. Actually I had no idea what color his eyes were, but they were intent and unblinking, as though waiting for a sign of activity from the mouse hole.
“I'm afraid we have some bad news for you, Mr. English,” Detective Chan said, as I started down the aisle of books towards my office.
I kept walking, as though I could walk away from whatever they were about to tell me.
“...Concerning an employee of yours. A Mr. Robert Hersey.”
I slowed down, stopped there in front of the Gothic section. A dozen damsels in distress (and flimsy negligees) caught my eyes. I turned to face the cops. They wore what I would describe as 'official' expressions.
“What about Robert?” There was a cold sinking in my gut. I wished I'd stopped for shoes. Barefoot and unshaven, I felt unbraced for bad news. Of course it was bad news. Anything to do with Robert was bound to be bad news.
“He's dead.” That was the big one, Riordan. He Man.
“Dead,” I repeated.
Silence.
“You don't seem surprised.”
“Of course I'm surprised.” I was, wasn't I? I felt kind of numb. “What happened? How did he die?”
They continued to eye me in that assessing way.
“He was murdered,” Detective Chan said.
My heart accelerated, then began to slug against my ribs. I felt the familiar weakness wash through me. My hands felt too heavy for my arms.
“I need to sit down,” I said.
I turned and headed back towards my office, reaching out to keep myself from careening into the crowded shelves. Behind me came the measured tread of their feet, just audible over the singing in my ears.
I pushed open my office door, sat down heavily at the desk and opened a drawer, groping inside. The phone on my desk began to ring, jangling loudly in the paperback silence. I ignored it, found my pills, managed to get the top off and palmed two. Washed them down with a swallow of whatever was in the can sitting there from yesterday. Tab. Warm Tab. It had a bracing effect.
“Sorry,” I told LA's finest. “Go ahead.”
Chan glanced at Riordan.
The phone, which had stopped ringing, started up again. “Aren't you going to answer that?” Riordan inquired after the fourth ring.
I shook my head. “How did---? Do you know who--?”
The phone stopped ringing. The silence was even more jarring.
“Hersey was found stabbed to death last night in the alley behind his apartment,” Chan answered.
Riordan said, without missing a beat, “What can you tell us about Hersey? How well did you know him? How long had he worked for you?”
“I've known Robert since high school. He's worked for me for about a year.”
“Any problems there? What kind of an employee was Hersey?”
I blinked up at Chan. “He was okay,” I said, at last focusing on their questions.
“What kind of friend was he?” Riordan asked.
“Sorry?”
“Were you sleeping with him?”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
“Were you lovers?” Chan asked, glancing at Riordan.
“No.”
“But you are homosexual?” That was Riordan, straight as a stick figure, summing me up with those cool eyes, and finding me lacking in all the right stuff.
“I'm gay. What of it?”
“And Hersey was homosexual?”
“And two plus two equals a murder charge?” The pills kicking in, I felt stronger. Strong enough to get angry. “We were friends, that's all. I don't know who Robert was sleeping with. He slept with a lot of people.”
I didn't quite mean it that way, I thought as Chan made a note. Or did I? I still couldn't take it in. Robert murdered? Beaten up, yes. Arrested, sure. Maybe even dead in a car crash--or by some autoerotic misadventure. But murdered? It seemed so unreal. So...Film At Eleven.
I kept wanting to ask if they were sure? Probably everyone they interviewed asked the same question.
I must have been staring fixedly into space because Riordan asked abruptly, “Are you all right, Mr. English? Are you ill?”
“I'm all right.”
“Could you give us the names of Hersey's-- uh--men friends?” Chan asked. The too polite 'men friends' put my teeth on edge.
“No. Robert and I didn't socialize much.”
Riordan's ears pricked up. “I thought you were friends?”
“We were. But--”
They waited. Chan glanced at Riordan. Though Chan was older I had the impression that Riordan was the main man. The one to watch out for.
I said cautiously, “We were friends, but Robert worked for me. Sometimes that put a strain on our relationship.”
“Meaning?”
“Just that we worked together all day; we wanted to see different people at night.”
“Uh huh. When was the last time you saw Mr. Hersey?”
“We had dinner--” I paused as Chan seemed about to point out that I had just said Robert and I didn't socialize. I finished lamely, “And then Robert left to meet a friend.”
“What friend?”
“He didn't say.”
Riordan looked skeptical. “When was this?”
“When was what?”
Patiently, long-suffering professional to civilian, he re-phrased, “When and where did you have dinner?”
“The Blue Parrot on Santa Monica Blvd. It was about six.
“And when did you leave?”
“Robert left about seven. I stayed and had a drink at the bar.”
“You have no idea who he left to meet? A first name? A nick name?”
“No.”
“Do you know if he was going home first or if they were meeting somewhere?”
“I don't know.” I frowned. “They were meeting somewhere, I think. Robert looked at his watch and said he was late; it would take him ten minutes. If he had been heading back home it would have taken him half an hour.”
Chan jotted all this down in a little notebook.
“Anything else you can tell us, Mr. English? Did Mr. Hersey ever indicate he was afraid of anyone?”
“No. Of course not.” I thought this over. “What makes you think he wasn't mugged?”
“Fourteen stab wounds to his upper body and face.”
I could feel the blood drain out of my face again.
“Those kind of wounds generally indicate prior acquaintance,” Riordan drawled.
I don't remember exactly all they asked, after that. Irrelevant details, I felt at the time: Did I live alone? Where had I gone to school? How long had I owned the shop? What did I do with my spare time?
They verified the spelling of my name. “Adrien, with an 'e',” I told Chan. He almost, but not quite, smirked.
They thanked me for my cooperation, told me they would be in touch.
Before he left my office, Riordan picked up the empty can on my desk. “Tab. I didn't know they still made that.”
He crushed it in one big fist and tossed it in the trash basket.
The phone started ringing before I could relock the front door. For a moment I thought it was Robert calling in sick again.
“Adrien, mon cher,” fluted the high, clear voice of Claude La Pierra. Claude owns Café Noir on Hillhurst Ave. He's big and black and beautiful. I've known him about three years. I'm convinced he's a Southland native, but he affects a kind of gender-confused French like a Left Bank expatriate with severe memory loss. “I just heard. It's too ghastly. I still can't believe it. Tell me I'm dreaming.”
“The police just left.”
“The police? Mon Dieu! What did they say? Do they know who did it?”
“I don't think so.”
“What did they tell you? What did you tell them? Did you tell them about me?”
“No, of course not.”
A noisy sigh of relief down the phone line. “Certainement pas! What is there to tell? But what about you? Are you all right?”
“I don't know. I haven't had time to think.”
“You must be in shock. Come by for lunch.”
“I can't, Claude.” The thought of food made me want to vomit. “I--there's no one to cover.”
“Don't be so bourgeois. You have to eat, Adrien. Close the shop for an hour. Close it for the day!”
“I'll think about it,” I promised vaguely.
No sooner had I hung up on Claude than the phone rang again. I ignored it, padding upstairs to shower.
But once upstairs I sank down on the couch, head in my hands. Outside the kitchen window I could hear a dove cooing, the soft sound distinct over the mid-morning rush of downtown traffic.
Rob dead. It seemed both unbelievable and inevitable. A dozen images flashed through my brain in some macabre mental slide show: Robert at sixteen, in his West Valley Academy tennis whites. Robert and I, drunk and fumbling, in the Ambassador Hotel the night of the Senior Prom. Robert on his wedding day. Robert last night, his face unfamiliar and distorted by anger.
No chance now to ever make it up. No chance to say good-bye. I wiped my eyes on my shirt sleeve, listened to the muffled ring of the phone downstairs. I told myself to get up and get dressed. Told myself I had a business to run. I continued to sit there, my mind racing ahead, looking for trouble. I could see it everywhere, looming up, pointing me out of the lineup. Maybe that sounds selfish, but half a lifetime of getting myself out of shit Robert landed me in had made me wary.
For seven years I had lived above the shop in “Old” Pasadena. Cloak and Dagger Books. New, used and vintage mysteries, with the largest selection of gay and gothic whodunits in Los Angeles. We held a workshop for mystery writers on Tuesday night. My partners in crime had finally convinced me to put out a monthly newsletter. And I had just sold my own first novel, Murder Will Out, about a gay Shakespearean actor who tries to solve a murder during a production of Macbeth.
Business was good. Life was good. But especially business was good. So good that I could barely keep up with it, let alone work on my next book. That's when Robert had turned up in my life again.
His marriage to Tara, his (official) high school sweetheart, was over. Getting out of the marriage had cost what Rob laughingly called a 'queen's ransom.' After six years and two-point-five children he was back from the Heartland of America, hard up and hard on. At the time it seemed like serendipity.
On automatic pilot I rose from the sofa, went into the bathroom to finish my shower and shave, which had been interrupted by the heavy hand of the law on my door buzzer at 8:05 a.m.
In the steamy surface of the mirror I grimaced at my reflection, hearing again that condescending, 'But you are a homosexual?' As in, 'But you are a lower life form?' So what had Detective Riordan seen? What was the first clue? Blue eyes, longish dark hair, a pale bony face. What was it in my Anglo-Norman ancestry that screamed 'faggot?'
Maybe he had a gaydar anti-cloaking device. Maybe there really was a straight guy checklist. Like those “How to Recognize a Homosexual” articles circa the Swinging Sixties. Way back when I had one stuck to the fridge door with my favorite 'give-aways' highlighted:
Delicate physique (or overly muscular)
Striking unusual poses
Gushy, flowery conversation, i.e., “wild,” “mad,” etc.
Insane jealousy
What's funny about that? Mel, my former partner, had asked irritably, ripping the list down one day.
Hey, isn't that on the list? 'Queer sense of humor?' Mel, do you think I'm homosexual?
So what led Detective Riordan to (in a manner of speaking) finger me?
Still on automatic pilot I got in the shower, soaped up, rinsed off, toweled down. It took me another numb fifteen minutes to find something to wear. Finally I gave up and I dressed in jeans and a white shirt. One thing that will never give me away is any sign of above average fashion sense.
I went back downstairs. Reluctantly.
The phone had apparently never stopped ringing. I answered it. It was a reporter: Bruce Green from Boytimes. I declined an interview and hung up. I plugged in the coffee machine, unlocked the front doors again, and phoned a temp agency.
I stumbled downstairs, unlocked the glass front doors, shoved back the ornate security gate, and let them in: two plainclothes detectives.
They identified themselves with a show of badges. Detective Chan was older, a little paunchy, a little rumpled, smelling of Old Spice and cigarettes as he brushed by me. The other one, Detective Riordan, was big and blonde, with a neo-Nazi haircut and tawny eyes. Actually I had no idea what color his eyes were, but they were intent and unblinking, as though waiting for a sign of activity from the mouse hole.
“I'm afraid we have some bad news for you, Mr. English,” Detective Chan said, as I started down the aisle of books towards my office.
I kept walking, as though I could walk away from whatever they were about to tell me.
“...Concerning an employee of yours. A Mr. Robert Hersey.”
I slowed down, stopped there in front of the Gothic section. A dozen damsels in distress (and flimsy negligees) caught my eyes. I turned to face the cops. They wore what I would describe as 'official' expressions.
“What about Robert?” There was a cold sinking in my gut. I wished I'd stopped for shoes. Barefoot and unshaven, I felt unbraced for bad news. Of course it was bad news. Anything to do with Robert was bound to be bad news.
“He's dead.” That was the big one, Riordan. He Man.
“Dead,” I repeated.
Silence.
“You don't seem surprised.”
“Of course I'm surprised.” I was, wasn't I? I felt kind of numb. “What happened? How did he die?”
They continued to eye me in that assessing way.
“He was murdered,” Detective Chan said.
My heart accelerated, then began to slug against my ribs. I felt the familiar weakness wash through me. My hands felt too heavy for my arms.
“I need to sit down,” I said.
I turned and headed back towards my office, reaching out to keep myself from careening into the crowded shelves. Behind me came the measured tread of their feet, just audible over the singing in my ears.
I pushed open my office door, sat down heavily at the desk and opened a drawer, groping inside. The phone on my desk began to ring, jangling loudly in the paperback silence. I ignored it, found my pills, managed to get the top off and palmed two. Washed them down with a swallow of whatever was in the can sitting there from yesterday. Tab. Warm Tab. It had a bracing effect.
“Sorry,” I told LA's finest. “Go ahead.”
Chan glanced at Riordan.
The phone, which had stopped ringing, started up again. “Aren't you going to answer that?” Riordan inquired after the fourth ring.
I shook my head. “How did---? Do you know who--?”
The phone stopped ringing. The silence was even more jarring.
“Hersey was found stabbed to death last night in the alley behind his apartment,” Chan answered.
Riordan said, without missing a beat, “What can you tell us about Hersey? How well did you know him? How long had he worked for you?”
“I've known Robert since high school. He's worked for me for about a year.”
“Any problems there? What kind of an employee was Hersey?”
I blinked up at Chan. “He was okay,” I said, at last focusing on their questions.
“What kind of friend was he?” Riordan asked.
“Sorry?”
“Were you sleeping with him?”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
“Were you lovers?” Chan asked, glancing at Riordan.
“No.”
“But you are homosexual?” That was Riordan, straight as a stick figure, summing me up with those cool eyes, and finding me lacking in all the right stuff.
“I'm gay. What of it?”
“And Hersey was homosexual?”
“And two plus two equals a murder charge?” The pills kicking in, I felt stronger. Strong enough to get angry. “We were friends, that's all. I don't know who Robert was sleeping with. He slept with a lot of people.”
I didn't quite mean it that way, I thought as Chan made a note. Or did I? I still couldn't take it in. Robert murdered? Beaten up, yes. Arrested, sure. Maybe even dead in a car crash--or by some autoerotic misadventure. But murdered? It seemed so unreal. So...Film At Eleven.
I kept wanting to ask if they were sure? Probably everyone they interviewed asked the same question.
I must have been staring fixedly into space because Riordan asked abruptly, “Are you all right, Mr. English? Are you ill?”
“I'm all right.”
“Could you give us the names of Hersey's-- uh--men friends?” Chan asked. The too polite 'men friends' put my teeth on edge.
“No. Robert and I didn't socialize much.”
Riordan's ears pricked up. “I thought you were friends?”
“We were. But--”
They waited. Chan glanced at Riordan. Though Chan was older I had the impression that Riordan was the main man. The one to watch out for.
I said cautiously, “We were friends, but Robert worked for me. Sometimes that put a strain on our relationship.”
“Meaning?”
“Just that we worked together all day; we wanted to see different people at night.”
“Uh huh. When was the last time you saw Mr. Hersey?”
“We had dinner--” I paused as Chan seemed about to point out that I had just said Robert and I didn't socialize. I finished lamely, “And then Robert left to meet a friend.”
“What friend?”
“He didn't say.”
Riordan looked skeptical. “When was this?”
“When was what?”
Patiently, long-suffering professional to civilian, he re-phrased, “When and where did you have dinner?”
“The Blue Parrot on Santa Monica Blvd. It was about six.
“And when did you leave?”
“Robert left about seven. I stayed and had a drink at the bar.”
“You have no idea who he left to meet? A first name? A nick name?”
“No.”
“Do you know if he was going home first or if they were meeting somewhere?”
“I don't know.” I frowned. “They were meeting somewhere, I think. Robert looked at his watch and said he was late; it would take him ten minutes. If he had been heading back home it would have taken him half an hour.”
Chan jotted all this down in a little notebook.
“Anything else you can tell us, Mr. English? Did Mr. Hersey ever indicate he was afraid of anyone?”
“No. Of course not.” I thought this over. “What makes you think he wasn't mugged?”
“Fourteen stab wounds to his upper body and face.”
I could feel the blood drain out of my face again.
“Those kind of wounds generally indicate prior acquaintance,” Riordan drawled.
I don't remember exactly all they asked, after that. Irrelevant details, I felt at the time: Did I live alone? Where had I gone to school? How long had I owned the shop? What did I do with my spare time?
They verified the spelling of my name. “Adrien, with an 'e',” I told Chan. He almost, but not quite, smirked.
They thanked me for my cooperation, told me they would be in touch.
Before he left my office, Riordan picked up the empty can on my desk. “Tab. I didn't know they still made that.”
He crushed it in one big fist and tossed it in the trash basket.
* * * * *
The phone started ringing before I could relock the front door. For a moment I thought it was Robert calling in sick again.
“Adrien, mon cher,” fluted the high, clear voice of Claude La Pierra. Claude owns Café Noir on Hillhurst Ave. He's big and black and beautiful. I've known him about three years. I'm convinced he's a Southland native, but he affects a kind of gender-confused French like a Left Bank expatriate with severe memory loss. “I just heard. It's too ghastly. I still can't believe it. Tell me I'm dreaming.”
“The police just left.”
“The police? Mon Dieu! What did they say? Do they know who did it?”
“I don't think so.”
“What did they tell you? What did you tell them? Did you tell them about me?”
“No, of course not.”
A noisy sigh of relief down the phone line. “Certainement pas! What is there to tell? But what about you? Are you all right?”
“I don't know. I haven't had time to think.”
“You must be in shock. Come by for lunch.”
“I can't, Claude.” The thought of food made me want to vomit. “I--there's no one to cover.”
“Don't be so bourgeois. You have to eat, Adrien. Close the shop for an hour. Close it for the day!”
“I'll think about it,” I promised vaguely.
No sooner had I hung up on Claude than the phone rang again. I ignored it, padding upstairs to shower.
But once upstairs I sank down on the couch, head in my hands. Outside the kitchen window I could hear a dove cooing, the soft sound distinct over the mid-morning rush of downtown traffic.
Rob dead. It seemed both unbelievable and inevitable. A dozen images flashed through my brain in some macabre mental slide show: Robert at sixteen, in his West Valley Academy tennis whites. Robert and I, drunk and fumbling, in the Ambassador Hotel the night of the Senior Prom. Robert on his wedding day. Robert last night, his face unfamiliar and distorted by anger.
No chance now to ever make it up. No chance to say good-bye. I wiped my eyes on my shirt sleeve, listened to the muffled ring of the phone downstairs. I told myself to get up and get dressed. Told myself I had a business to run. I continued to sit there, my mind racing ahead, looking for trouble. I could see it everywhere, looming up, pointing me out of the lineup. Maybe that sounds selfish, but half a lifetime of getting myself out of shit Robert landed me in had made me wary.
For seven years I had lived above the shop in “Old” Pasadena. Cloak and Dagger Books. New, used and vintage mysteries, with the largest selection of gay and gothic whodunits in Los Angeles. We held a workshop for mystery writers on Tuesday night. My partners in crime had finally convinced me to put out a monthly newsletter. And I had just sold my own first novel, Murder Will Out, about a gay Shakespearean actor who tries to solve a murder during a production of Macbeth.
Business was good. Life was good. But especially business was good. So good that I could barely keep up with it, let alone work on my next book. That's when Robert had turned up in my life again.
His marriage to Tara, his (official) high school sweetheart, was over. Getting out of the marriage had cost what Rob laughingly called a 'queen's ransom.' After six years and two-point-five children he was back from the Heartland of America, hard up and hard on. At the time it seemed like serendipity.
On automatic pilot I rose from the sofa, went into the bathroom to finish my shower and shave, which had been interrupted by the heavy hand of the law on my door buzzer at 8:05 a.m.
In the steamy surface of the mirror I grimaced at my reflection, hearing again that condescending, 'But you are a homosexual?' As in, 'But you are a lower life form?' So what had Detective Riordan seen? What was the first clue? Blue eyes, longish dark hair, a pale bony face. What was it in my Anglo-Norman ancestry that screamed 'faggot?'
Maybe he had a gaydar anti-cloaking device. Maybe there really was a straight guy checklist. Like those “How to Recognize a Homosexual” articles circa the Swinging Sixties. Way back when I had one stuck to the fridge door with my favorite 'give-aways' highlighted:
Delicate physique (or overly muscular)
Striking unusual poses
Gushy, flowery conversation, i.e., “wild,” “mad,” etc.
Insane jealousy
What's funny about that? Mel, my former partner, had asked irritably, ripping the list down one day.
Hey, isn't that on the list? 'Queer sense of humor?' Mel, do you think I'm homosexual?
So what led Detective Riordan to (in a manner of speaking) finger me?
Still on automatic pilot I got in the shower, soaped up, rinsed off, toweled down. It took me another numb fifteen minutes to find something to wear. Finally I gave up and I dressed in jeans and a white shirt. One thing that will never give me away is any sign of above average fashion sense.
I went back downstairs. Reluctantly.
The phone had apparently never stopped ringing. I answered it. It was a reporter: Bruce Green from Boytimes. I declined an interview and hung up. I plugged in the coffee machine, unlocked the front doors again, and phoned a temp agency.
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.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.
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