Lying Eyes

Robert Winter
Self-Published
Reviewed by Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Summary

This bartender’s art lies in more than mixing drinks …

Randy Vaughan is a six-foot-three mass of mysteries to his customers and his friends. Why does a former Secret Service agent now own Mata Hari, a successful piano bar? Where did a muscle daddy get his passion for collecting fine art? If he’s as much a loner as his friends believe, why does he crave weekly sessions at an exclusive leather club?

Randy’s carefully private life unravels when Jack Fraser, a handsome art historian from England, walks into his bar, anxious to get his hands on a painting Randy owns. The desperation Randy glimpses in whiskey-colored eyes draws him in, as does the desire to submit that he senses beneath Jack’s elegant, driven exterior.

While wrestling with his attraction to Jack, Randy has to deal with a homeless teenager, a break-in at Mata Hari, and Jack’s relentless pursuit of the painting called Sunrise. It becomes clear someone’s lying to Randy. Unless he can figure out who and why, he may miss his chance at the love he’s dreamed about in the hidden places of his heart.

Note: Lying Eyes is a standalone gay romance novel with consensual bondage and a strong happy ending. It contains potential spoilers for Robert Winter’s prior novel, Every Breath You Take.

My Review

After meeting Randy Vaughan, sexy older bartender in Every Breath You Take, I was thrilled to get the opportunity to read his story and find out why he is not in a relationship and why he retired early from the Secret Service.

Those mysteries and a few others gradually get solved as Randy learns more about Jack Fraser, an English art historian who is extremely interested in a post-impressionist painting Randy purchased while he was in London. Meanwhile, a homeless teenager is assaulted outside Randy’s bar and Randy, all big muscles and soft heart, dispatches his assailants and brings the kid home. Danny has secrets, but doesn’t hide the fact that he finds Randy hot. Though this is an awkward situation for Randy, he remains firm and never allows their relationship to move beyond friendship. While Danny is living with him, Randy also hides his weekly visits to an exclusive leather bar. To his surprise, he discovers the sexually submissive Jack shares similar interests.

I loved Jack’s passion towards his job and found the story rich with interesting details and history of post-impressionist art and was fascinated by how much work and research goes into determining the authenticity of a painting. While Jean-Pierre Brousseau was a fictional artist, he sure felt real to me. I also loved the glimpses into Randy’s warm and caring personality. Despite his skittishness about relationships and his gruff exterior, Randy cares deeply about his friends, treats his employees well, and is devoted to Danny’s care.

This was a perfect mix of romance, mystery, and suspense that was a lot of fun to read. Weighty issues, like overcoming the pain of betrayal, and learning to trust and forgive are explored, lending depth and complexity.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story and hope Danny will make another appearance.

Reaper

Reaper by Gregory Blackman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Horace McKidrict doesn't remember two years of his life. McKidrict plans to learn what happened to him by hunting down the first being he remembers after his two year time gap, a demon called the Abaddon. While angels fight for heaven and demons fight for hell, reapers like McKidrict fight for humanity.

Reaper feels very much like a knockoff demon hunter story. My initial thoughts go to the Supernatural TV show, most specifically when Angels were revealed to be real. It also has the vibe of the Supernatural episode where Sam and Dean travel back in time to meet Samuel Colt in a Western era monster hunting mashup.

Horace McKidtrick could be any one of numerous bland monster hunting characters. He's mean, carries a gun, and tends to work alone. Plus demons shutter when they know he's after him. It's all pretty cliché unfortunately. I didn't find any particularly interesting original material.

Reaper was a below average monster hunter story packed full of familiar tropes.

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THE BLACKHOUSE BY PETER MAY BOOK ONE IN THE LEWIS TRILOGY

The Blackhouse by Peter May
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Knew, too, that it wasn’t just Mona he wanted to run away from. It was everything. Back to a place where life had once seemed simple. A return to childhood, back to the womb. How easy it was now to ignore the fact that he had spent most of his adult life avoiding just that. Easy to forget that as a teenager nothing had seemed more important to him than leaving.”

Detective Fin Macleod is sent back to the place where he was bred, born, burnished, and raised as an orphan. A murder has happened on the Isle of Lewis in The Outer Hebrides of Scotland in the very town Fin was from, Crobost. The murder has similar characteristics of brutality to a murder he has been working on in Edinburgh. He had only come back to the island for the funeral of his aunt since he left to go to school in Glasgow, so everything there is tinged in the sepia tones of the past. The tender threads that held his marriage together with Mona snapped with the tragic death of his son. The sorrows and desperations of his current life outweigh the dread of dredging up memories of his unhappy childhood. When you grow up in a small community, they remember everything you’ve ever done: the good, the bad, and the ugly. In some ways, you never escape the fallacies of your youth, when everyone’s memory is so long.

The irony is that he is going back to investigate the murder of Angel Macritchie, who despite his name was certainly no Angel. There is no one from Fin’s past who inspires more terror wrapped nightmares than Angel Macritchie. With a long list of grievances perpetrated against nearly every male member of the community and more than a few females, most everyone's a viable suspect, but then a brutish murder like this comes from more than just someone harboring a grievance.

This murderer is twisted and depraved.

As Fin investigates the murder, trying to find a motive that would fit such a crime, he also finds himself sifting through the debris of his own memories, his own failings, and those he hurt the worst as he flailed to adulthood. There is no one he hurt worst than the lovely girl from the farm who loved him from the first moment she laid those cornflower eyes on him...Marsaili. She is still on the island, now married to his best friend from school, Atair MacInnes.

”A blink of moonlight splashed a pool of broken silver on the ocean beyond. There was a light on in the kitchen, and through the window Fin could see a figure at the sink. He realized, with a start, that it was Marsaili, long fair hair, darker now, drawn back severely from her face and tied in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wore no makeup and looked weary somehow, pale, with shadows beneath blue eyes that had lost their lustre. She looked up as she heard the car, and Fin killed the headlights so that all she could see would be a reflection of herself in the window. She looked away quickly, as if disappointed by what she’d seen, and in that moment he glimpsed again the little girl who had so bewitched him from the first moment he set eyes on her.”

Fin treated her terribly. That’s what we seem to do to those who love us the most. Peter May gives us this relationship from the first flowering of love, through the lust, and onward to where we see the tearing apart of their entwined lives. Fin tries to explain the unexplainable.

”’Please,’ she said, almost as if she knew that he was going to tell her he had always loved her, too. ‘I don’t want to hear it. Not now, Fin, not after all these wasted years.’ And she turned to meet his eye. Their faces were inches apart. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’”

This reader couldn’t bear it either. Don’t you dare say it, Fin.

Because we know so much about Fin and the numerous times when he experienced crushing setbacks in his life, we can’t even condemn him. (Ok that isn’t completely true. I’m still pissed at him.) The one person who could have sustained him is still connected to the very island he was trying to escape. Marsaili washes back upon the shore of the Isle of Lewis as part of the debris that is the shipwreck of his life.

The Churches of Scotland dominate island life, each vying to be more severe than the next as proof that their sect is more religious than the others. Swings are tied up on Sunday so no child will be tempted to be lifted from the earth on the Sabbath. Belief in a higher being drowned by madness. This overbearing influence warps minds and deforms bodies under the crippling weight of guilt that can never really be forgiven, but must be carried on the soul like piles of jagged black stones. We must be reminded of our sins so we stay afraid of our creator.

There is a rock off shore called Sulasgeir, where ten selected men go each year to harvest the guga’s offspring. It is a bloody massacre, and fortunately, the government only allows them to take 2000 birds a year. The fledglings have to be the right age to taste the best. If they are too large or too small, they are allowed to live. Fin was a part of that group one year before he left for college. It is a dangerous experience for the men, among the craggy rocks that prove to be tinged with tragedy. Why do these men do it every year? Tradition? ”But Gigs shook his head. ‘No. It’s not the tradition. That might be a part of it, aye. But I’ll tell you why I do it, boy. Because nobody else does it anywhere in the world. Just us.’”

This book is so much more than just a murder mystery. I felt completely immersed in these people’s lives. I wasn’t always happy about it. There were times when it made me feel uncomfortable. I read this on the plane to San Francisco for a visit to Goodreads Headquarters, and I’m sure many of my fellow passengers wondered what I was reading that was making me grimace and squirm in my seat. Once on the island, Fin remembers things that were tamped down so deep they were nearly forgotten. He burns with shame at his own failings, laid so bare, and tries as best he can to fix the wounds he left in others as he tries to live with the lacerations that life has inflicted on him. There are twists and turns and revelations. By the end, I could not deny that Peter May has written a novel that I will never forget. Hebrides Noir.

”And then he felt it. The cold bite of iron, the movement of the ring as his fingers closed desperately around it, and held. And held. Almost dislocating his shoulder as the sea pulled and jerked, before finally, reluctantly letting go. For a moment he lay still, clutching the mooring ring, washing up on the rock like a beached sea creature. And then he scrambled for a foothold, and then a handhold, and the strength to propel himself upward before the sea returned to reclaim him. He could sense it snapping at his heels as he found the ledge of the rock…. He’d made it. He was on the rock, safe from the sea. And all that it could do now was spit its anger in his face.”

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Blackwing By: Ed McDonald

Blackwing by Ed McDonald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

one of the best fantasy's of the year..period. A horrific wasteland that you want no part of, but a book you can't stop reading. Strong characters, great action, a interesting world that you want to find out more about. It hits all the buttons.

If you haven't picked this up go do it....(you can thank me later)



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Black Goat Blues By: Levi Black

Black Goat Blues by Levi Black
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great urban fantasy, I already said elsewhere that I love Lovecraftian stuff way more when Lovecraft doesn't do it. The Mythos war is a great series and Black Goat Blues is a tight, bloody, action packed visceral work. It is a pretty by the book urban fantasy series, but the sheer force and wonderful vision of the world and the characters make it worth the read.

I look forward to more of this world. check it out

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Breaking Good!

A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

That was really good. I mean really good! I knew I was going to enjoy it, because I'm a Brian Cranston/Breaking Bad fan, but this was exceptional.

Acclaimed actor Brian Cranston is a surprisingly good storyteller and the man has some stories to tell! I found this online in audiobook form with him doing the reading and that, imo, is the best way to read an autobiography. Who better to relate their life story than the person who lived it? Sure, some people absolutely suck at reading and shouldn't be allowed in a recording studio. Cranston's not one of them. He's got a great reading voice and he knows the passages requiring special inflection. At certain points, he acts this book and it's all the better for it.

As I alluded to earlier, Cranston has had an interesting life. From early childhood onward, his life has been a rollercoaster of unlikely twists and turns, pockmarked by the occasional emotional landmine. Even his parents provide intrigue and his take on their colorful pasts gives insight into his own.

After a thorough and thoroughly enjoyable retelling of his youth and early career paths, A Life in Parts takes us right up through Breaking Bad and a bit beyond. Being such a big BB fan, I knew I was going to enjoy that part of the book. However, I was extremely pleased to find myself fully engaged through out this most excellent autobio.

I give my highest recommendations for Cranston fans. Hell, I'd recommend this even if you weren't familiar with his work. If you like a good biography, this one won't let you down!



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Boston Crime in the '90s

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A crime drama set in '90s Boston?! Yes and thank you!

I came of age in the 1990s just 45 minutes outside of Boston. So much of this book speaks to me.

What didn't feel as intimate was the race relations/strife plot. There was one black family in my sleepy little suburban hometown when I grew up. I'm sure we had racists, but racism wasn't a thing because there weren't races, just a bunch of whities. The subject didn't come up unless it was in the newspapers. The city had its problems, has had its problems right along. A Drink Before the War touches upon Boston's race problem in a grand, as well as intimate, way.

Plot summary quickie: Two private investigators are tasked by local politicians to retrieve certain documents. The pair end up in the middle of a gang war. But something deeper and darker is going on, which pushes our heroes to go above and beyond the call of duty. Also, during the investigation one of the investigators struggles with memories of his own past while the other deals with an abusive husband. Big and small, political and personal storylines pulse throughout A Drink Before the War.

I loved the two main characters, maybe not as people, but at least as well developed characters. Why not as people? Well, no one is clean. I mean, just about everyone in this book has flaws. Some are bigger and harder to overlook than others. But Dennis Lehane was looking to prick his readers' moral repugnance and he did a hell of a job, all while telling a fast-paced thriller.

There's nothing wrong with this book from my perspective. So why didn't I give this a five star rating? It's fantastic! And yet, it doesn't quite feel like a masterpiece. Maybe it's because it spends most of its time in the dirt. You feel filthy after reading this one, tarnished by the crooked politicians, the degenerates, gangland violence, unrepentant slayings, etc. However, that was its intent and it succeeds...oh man, does it ever succeed.

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City Knight

T.A. Webb
Self-Published
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

My Review

If I decide to embark on a series, I like to test the waters by reading the first book. If that book ends in a massive cliffhanger, it makes me grumpy. I don’t mind gentle hooks to encourage a reader to buy the next book, but I hate being manipulated into it because the first book is not complete.

So I’m really glad I read this compilation of five stories (which really should have been written as one story) rather than subjected myself to the torture of cliffhangers and unresolved loose ends.

City Knight: Working It

I have a weakness for rent boys and cops. I also love May-December romances. I’m so happy this story has all three! Ben Danvers is hustling his way through college while Marcus Prater is a retired cop still patrolling the streets of Atlanta because of a promise he made. Though both men are broken and haunted by events from their past, they form a solid connection that moves from humorous banter, steamy sex, and tender feelings to something much deeper. This gripping little story packed a whole lot of powerful emotions, but the cliffhanger was just cruel.

Knightmare

This story starts where the first left off, with my heart in my mouth. While Marcus is embarking on his search, so desperate to impart the bad news he received and protect his new lover, we meet his friends, Wick, Chance, Archer and Zachary, and get a taste of the grief that still haunts him. Marcus is not the only one feeling pain, though. Because of three little words uttered by Marcus, Ben flees into the night, feeling he is unworthy and damaged even though he wants to be loved so badly. When Ben’s past comes crashing in, Marcus shows how growly, possessive and fiercely protective he is. Their last love scene was so charged, so passionate. I love these guys together and want all the best for them, but their hardships are not yet through with them.

Starry Night

After the difficulties faced by Marcus and Ben in the previous two stories, I was relieved that this story tied up some loose ends and showed some growth in Ben’s and Marcus’ relationship. At times, though, it felt cluttered with too many visits from Marcus’ friends while he was recovering from his wound. A little more background on his friends may have helped me to enjoy this one more. I found myself skimming to get back to Ben and Marcus.

Knights Out

Just when I thought this series was starting to lose steam, new plots and characters are introduced. Ben and Marcus are happy together, but they have not forgotten about the young men selling their bodies who need their help. There is more tension, tears and heartbreak as they search for a missing rent boy. I enjoyed learning more about Marcus’ background and the touching reunion with his brother. No cliffhanger, just a sad ending and a gentle hook leading to a mystery that needs to be solved.

Darkest Knight

Marcus and Ben are a couple I won’t forget anytime soon. Though Ben is still dealing with anxiety from his assault, he and Marcus are as solid as granite. They continue to learn about each other, disclose painful memories and work together to find a killer with Ben as bait. This story concluded with a few loose ends, so I’m hoping there will be new installments.

Each of these riveting and suspenseful short stories explores sorrow, love, friendship, human degradation, and the good we are all capable of. I’m a little unhappy that this collection is loosely connected with another set of stories by different authors. I probably won’t seek them out, but I’ll happily read anything T.A. Webb writes.

Mage Hunter: Blooded Snow

Mage Hunter: Blooded Snow by Ty Johnston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sergeant Guthrie Hackett is mere days from being released from the army. Unfortunately the plans of a new life are shattered along with the lives of his squad as they are massacred in an ambush led by a witch. Hackett is allowed to live to tell the story of what happened. Before Hackett can return an Ice Witch forces a power upon him in order to ensure her survival.

Mage Hunter: Blooded Snow is an average story that is overly short. It feels like the first few chapters of a larger book. Looking at the sequels the author appears to have written them in an issue type of format. Based on that not much happened in the story, but a lot of foundational storylines are being laid.

Unfortunately nothing was particularly unique or interesting in Mage Hunter: Blooded Snow. Enemies raiding borders, ambushes, magic, and witches are all common in fantasy stories. The power bestowed on Sergeant Hackett could potentially be interesting because I don't imagine the tiny amount of information the story shared about his power is all he can do.

Mage Hunter: Blooded Snow is a common fantasy tale that mildly kept my interest.

2.5 out of 5 stars

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The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz

The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“First you find out the truth. then you take revenge.”

There are just times when the laws of the land get things wrong. Our uber hip, ominously dangerous heroine, Miss Lisbeth Salander, is in Flodberga prison for two months because, in the course of saving an autistic child from his abuser, she got…too aggressive.

She did. I was there. I saw it with my reader’s eye. She beat the shit out of that low life, steaming pile of excrement.

Knowing LIsbeth as I do, this is my fifth book experience with her, I know she sat in that courtroom in brooding silence and offered no defense. Her code is that she shouldn’t have to defend herself in the face of such hypocrisy. She barely recognizes the court’s right to incarcerate her, but she did just order a bunch of books, a bit of light reading, on Quantum Field Theory, and maybe a few months in a quiet cell will allow her to finally work out the final wiggles in her quantum mechanical calculations.

I knew a writer, Pico Iyer, who would routinely check himself into the monastery at Big Sur to finish books. It would be similar to being in a prison, but the enclosed atmosphere always restarted his creative juices. If I were incarcerated, for say redistributing wealth, I would insist (plea) on being sent to the prison with the best library system. I would ask for solitary confinement, take my meals in my cell, and expect new books to be distributed to me every few days. If need be, I’d open a vein and sketch out my book reviews in blood with a rat’s tooth on toilet paper and have them snuck out of the prison, hopefully by the man who delivers my books because I’ve threatened to eviscerate him in every story I write for the rest of my life if he doesn’t help me.

I would get a lot of reading done.

Not that I’ve given this any thought.

Of course, the problem is Salander is not given the peace and quiet she craves. The beautiful, petite Faria Kazi, incarcerated for killing her brother after he killed her boyfriend in an Islamic fueled blood feud, is the favorite target of a woman who calls herself Benito. ”She was originally called Beatrice, and later took the name of a certain Italian fascist. These days she had a swastika tattooed on her throat, a crew cut and an unhealthy, pallid complexion.”

Obviously, her parents did not pay enough attention to her as a child.

Salander has zero tolerance for abuse. She sustained enough of it while she was growing up. She has made herself into a deadly weapon, and as tough as Benito is, I’m putting my money on Lisbeth every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Now what is interesting, in the fight scene it shows the difference between the two authors. Stieg Larsson would have given us detailed descriptions of the fight scene, where with David Lagercrantz, the fight begins and then a shutter comes down on the action and then shutter lifts to show someone on the ground gasping for breath. Maybe Lisbeth just moves too fast for Lagercrantz. Not a big complaint, but just a noticeable difference in styles of writing.

Mikael Blomkivst, Mr. Expose from the magazine Millenneum, who has helped Salander as best he can since the beginning of this series, is back once again. He goes to see Salander once a week, which is rarely satisfying because Lisbeth isn’t much for chit chat. She does give him a lead that she wants him to follow up on regarding the Registry, which has been an organization she has been trying to bring down ever since she found out her and her twin sister were forced into that program. This organization like to study identical twins growing up in vastly different environments.

They were demented people on an insidious mission, hidden beneath the guise of scientific research.

Lisbeth does remember one person specifically attached to the program.

”’There was a woman who used to stop by to see you, wasn’t there? It’s coming back to me now. She had some kind of birthmark.’

‘It looked like a burn on her throat.’

‘As if a dragon had breathed fire on her.’”

Lagercrantz also reveals more about the origin of Lisbeth Salander’s sexy dragon tattoo. There is some great backstory on our post-truth society and using ”lies as weapons,” as well. I’ve been increasingly concerned about the lack of interest in truth if it doesn’t jive with people’s own beliefs, so those passages resonate with me. Furthermore, Blomkvist is investigating the effects of a recent hacking of the stock market that caused panic.

”’Doubt on a small scale is what makes the stock market possible,’ Mannheimer replied. ‘Every day, millions of people out there doubt and hope and analyze. That’s what sets share prices. What I’m talking about is deep, existential doubt---lack of faith in growth and future returns. Nothing is more dangerous for a highly valued market. That level of fear can cause a crash and plunge the world into a depression. We could even start to question the whole idea, the imaginary construct. This will sound like a provocation to some of you, and I apologize for that. But the financial market is not something that exists like you or I, Karin, or this bottle of water on the table. The moment we stop believing in it, it ceases to exist.’”

I love it when a writer expresses something I believe... in such a simple well defined way. I do, I confess, have some of my portfolio in the stock market, but it is a relatively small amount of my retirement. I’ve plunged most of my money into things more tangible like real estate. I can see it. I don’t have to imagine it. I feel the stock market is all just a rigged game for rich people to become richer, while the middle class dreamers who invest in the market thinking they will be rich, often see their life savings evaporate into thin air, like it never existed.

Blomkvist and Salander join forces once again to try and bring down the forces of the Registry. Sometimes it feels like one step forward and two steps back, but they continue to circle closer to the black heart that guides the rest. David Lagercrantz is not Stieg Larsson. (I’m so glad he isn’t trying to wear a dead man's clothes.) Some may miss Larsson’s unique writing style. Lagercrantz may be different, but he is keeping Larsson’s characters alive and writing thrilling stories that I continue to enjoy.

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