Josh Lanyon The Hell You Say

The Hell You Say

Josh Lanyon

iUniverse, Mar 2006, $15.95

ISBN: 0595385125

In Los Angeles Cloak and Dagger bookstore owner Adrien English worries about his clerk Angus, who has been receiving satanic threats over the phone. Feeling generous with Christmas coming and wanting the "Crank calls from the crypt" to stop, he gives Angus eight hundred dollars to leave town with his girlfriend Wanda for awhile.

Adrien's in the closet lover LAPD Jake Riordan is mortified that he sent Angus out of town as he wants to ask the clerk what he knows about cults as he investigates ritual homicides. Meanwhile at a book signing at the Cloak and Dagger, author Gabe Savant announces he is researching a cult that he plans to expose in his next book. Adrien assumes this is a dumb publicity stunt. Instead he decides to follow up on who is threatening Angus. Since his clerk is also a teaching assistant at UCLA Adrien visits Angus' employer dynamic Professor Snowden. As the separate threads tie together into A DANGEROUS THING, Adrien realizes all hell has broken out with him as the focal point of unknown FATAL SHADOWS.

The third English amateur sleuth tale, THE HELL YOU SAY, combines humor, satanic cults, and a realistic gay relationship into a superb mystery that will have newcomers (like this reviewer) needing to obtain the previous bookstore owner's escapades. Though this is the likable Adrien's show, Jake in many ways steals the plot as he hides his sexual preference from his blue knight peers while ripping the skin off of his lover for enabling Angus to leave town. Great characterizations especially Adrien's about to marry self-centered mom who totally accepts her son being gay and the handsome witty professor inside a fast-paced well written story line make for a fantastic tale

Harriet Klausner