Renee's Book Addiction

[Bridget] Just finished reading . . . The Adrien English Mysteries

Today, Bridget from Good Books, Bad Books, & Every Book in Between is answering my challenge (she’ll fill you in in the body of her post) to read one of my favorites, The Adrien Engish Mysteries (Books 1 & 2 of the Adrien English series, Fatal Shadows and A Dangerous Thing.) (See my review post here.)

I will be at her place, reviewing her challenge book Nora Roberts’ Sea Swept (Chesapeake Bay series, book 1.) Come on over and say ‘hi’!

Here’s what Bridget has to say about The Adrien English Mysteries:

About a month or so ago, Renee and I were chatting via that handy-dandy gmail chat feature when we got on the topic of authors everyone else loves, but you don’t.  She said Nora Roberts (gasp) and I told her m/m.  It’s not necessarily that I hate them, but haven’t read any that have really caught me either.  She challenged me to read the first two books in Josh Lanyon’s Adrien English series and I challenged her to read Sea Swept by La Nora.
Here’s the basic blurb:

Relationships can be murder. Bookseller and mystery author Adrien English is looking for love in all the wrong places — and, according to hot and handsome LAPD detective Jake Riordan, it’s liable to get him killed. Fatal Shadows A serial killer is stalking gay men, and a tawny-eyed LAPD detective wants bookseller Adrien English in handcuffs — for all the wrong reasons! A Dangerous Thing When his romance goes south, Adrien heads north to the California Motherlode country. Can murder — and Adrien’s favorite LAPD detective — be far behind?

Hmm…what to say?  Starting out reading Fatal Shadows, I noticed that there was definitely a film noir vibe to the books (I’m thinking it was pretty intentional).  Adrien gets a visit from cops telling him his friend has been murdered.  And that’s when everything falls apart.

Both books are written entirely in Adrien’s POV.  I think the 1st person POV worked fine in Fatal Shadows, but was horrible for A Dangerous Thing.  Where Fatal Shadows comes across as a murder mystery-meets-potential romance with a certain hot detective, I found A Dangerous Thing to be a bit of a mess.

Fatal Shadows read like one of those old-fashioned whodunits along the lines of Agatha Christie.  Adrien is at a complete loss throughout 99% of the book trying to figure out not only why so many people from his past are dying, but also why he’s the one who seems to be getting blamed for it.

On top of that is his attraction for Detective Riordan who might come across as hot to a lot of people, but kind of left me cold.  It wasn’t until close to the end of the book where I could finally see the appeal of Jake.  Is he my favorite?  Not by a long shot, but I liked how he was into Adrien even though he wasn’t sure why.

But, and here’s a big but, my biggest issue with both books is that Adrien came way too close to being TSTL throughout both books.  Instead of allowing the cops to do their job and giving them information that might be helpful, he gets himself into situations where he should have been killed.  In A Dangerous Thing there were quite a few times where I was seriously tempted to smack him upside the head and ask him if he had a death wish.

It probably sounds like I hate these books…and I don’t.  Truly, I don’t.  However, I wouldn’t classify them as my all-time favorites either.  Too many instances of stupidity and a lack of judgment drove me up the wall.  I think Mr. Lanyon is a good writer and I know he has an extremely dedicated following (LB in particular J).  Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to be one of them.

My Overall Rating:  C (B- for Fatal Shadows and a C-for A Dangerous Thing)

Well, I guess I can’t win ‘em all! <g>

However, I’m really glad that Bridget rose to the challenge. It was a lot of fun to try something new, and both of us got to expand our reading horizons.

May 25, 2009 at 6:00 am 15 comments