A Dangerous Thing is the second book in The Adrien English Mysteries by Josh Lanyon. It was first published 2002, and later re-published in 2007 by MLR Press. I listened to this mystery as an audiobook, narrated by Chris Patton.
The book follows Adrien English as he, after an argument with his on and off boyfriend Jake Riordan, decide to visit his dead grandma’s house in the middle of nowhere, but on the way there he encounters a body. As the sheriff comes, the body is gone, but Adrien know what he saw and calls Jake who shows up as the mystery thickens when the body shows up, but according to Adrien not the right body. As old native American legends haunt the little town, Adrien is caught up in yet another mystery that only he seems interested in solving.
Josh Lanyon is very fond of the plot point of everyone suspecting the main character for murder, in this book along with the first one it is often because of him being gay. It became almost a bit silly after a while, the two cops in this book pretty much say they should “string him up” like that is a thing today. Especially when they know he is friends with a cop and comes from a big city and is rich. No one get away with murdering a guy like that but I guess Lanyon didn’t have a high opinion of towners intelligence.
Now despite not being a supernatural book, there is a bit of an uncertain element in the book that can suggest that something supernatural might not be an impossibility. It is never answered but I like those uncertain elements. The mystery itself is straight forward, more closely related to Nancy Drew books than any of Agatha Christies books.
With that I mean that you aren’t really given clues that you try to piece together as a reader, but you just listen to the main character jump from incident till incident until the final reveal happens. That isn’t something bad, but it isn’t as much a mystery as much as it is a detective story.
We encounter the same characters but don’t really get much of a development of the characters themselves. We know as much of Adrien and Jake as we did before, but their relationship seem to develop a bit more so, unlike the first book, I would say that this one has more of an MxM romance for those disappointed in of the first book for its lack of a solid main couple.
I didn’t really care either way since one thing I adore with Lanyon’s books are her ability to make organic and slow burning romances. They are rare, especially among the MxM books where the who male leads bang each other pretty much straight after meeting each other. Though I suspect that people who adore MxM romances might like that kind of fast paced romances and might hold it against this book for not following the norm.
I thought this was a decent book, easier to digest than the first one since I didn’t find this one as cliché, but it is still nothing to groundbreaking. It is a solid book though and amused me as I listened to it. I was bothered by everyone’s hate for gay people, especially cops, it was weird. Especially when in both the first and the second book, everyone keeps thinking that Adrien have to have done it because he is gay. This book even had a crazy priest calling him an abomination, that is just one step too far but maybe that is just me. All in all, I will give it a 6 out of 10, it is not Josh Lanyon’s best book but her writing is solid enough to hold up this one despite its flaws.
With Kind Regards
Senefer.
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