A Dangerous Thing by Josh LanyonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lamenting that his relationship (friendship? Who-knows-ship?) with LAPD Homicide Detective Jake Riordan is going about as swell as his writing the next book in his sleuthing series, bookseller/amatuer sleuth himself Adrien English decides getting out of LA for a while would be a great idea.
And from there he stumbles onto another murder mystery. Literally. There's a dead body on his property in the mountains. This gruesome discovery leads to Adrien finally getting what he wanted - time with reluctant, closeted, self-hating Jake.
I liked this one more than the first for a lot of reasons. The main one being no sassy (gay) black best friend. I hate that trope with the fire of 40 thousand suns. A clear view of Jake and Adrien's budding romance (which we barely got in the first book), a deeper look into Jake himself, Native American folklore which I adore, and less of Adrien's internal monologue. Adrien didn't change that much from the first book personality-wise, but here he seems more...confident? More sure of himself? I suppose surviving almost dying at the hands of, in addition to losing two close friends to, a madman would make everything else pale in comparison. But he's still the snarky smart-mouth that I like. I confess that I would have liked to see him have a little PTSD. He did experience a lot of trauma.
As usual, I was hooked from the first page and enjoyed reading it, but I honestly can't say it was because of the mystery. It's definitely my enjoyment of the characters. I daresay I like where I think this series is going. That's mostly because of Jake. He's a walking contradiction, constantly at war with who he is, what he feels and who he thinks he should be and that's the making of great character growth.
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