Lament at Loon Landing (Secrets and Scrabble 6) by Josh Lanyon at JustJoshin Publishing
Genre | Gay / Contemporary / Law Enforcement / Romance / Mystery/Suspense/Thriller |
Reviewed by | ParisDude on 23-January-2025 |
Genre | Gay / Contemporary / Law Enforcement / Romance / Mystery/Suspense/Thriller |
Reviewed by | ParisDude on 23-January-2025 |
Fakes, folk music, and ghost fires
When legendary folk singer Lara Fairplay agrees to make her comeback debut at Pirate’s Cove’s annual maritime music festival, everyone in the quaint seaside village is delighted—including mystery bookstore owner and sometimes amateur sleuth, Ellery Page.
Better yet, Lara is scheduled to perform a recently discovered piece of music attributed to “The Father of American Music,” Stephen Foster, which will hopefully bring large crowds and a lot of business.
Several mysterious accidents later, Ellery is less delighted as his suspicion grows that someone plans to silence the celebrity songbird forever.
I had to wait quite a while for this sixth book in Josh Lanyon’s ‘Secret and Scrabbles’ series to be published in 2023 (as a reminder, book five was out at the end of 2021). The problem was, Josh had released book number seven in the meantime, and I couldn’t bring myself to read the books out of order (yes, I know, there are several adequate words for this behavior). So I waited, waited, waited. And when I finally purchased it, I completely forgot about it. Until last week, where I rediscovered it with unmitigated joy on my Kindle, opened it, and gave it a go.
The return to Pirate’s Cove had an instant coming-home effect on me. Especially when meeting Ellery Page again after all this time. The young owner of the seaside village’s only murder mysteries bookshop is looking forward to enjoying this year’s round of the local maritime music festival together with his hunky boyfriend, Police Chief Jack Carson. Although he’s not really into folk music, he has heard of the main act before. Not only has Lara Fairplay had a couple of hits, back in the day, but she was also sentenced for killing someone in a bar fight. Pirate’s Cove is her attempt of making an honorable comeback.
Alas, even before she sets foot on the island, she gets an advance welcome in the form of anonymous death threats. They don’t bother her much, but her husband-cum-manager as well as her sister, who acts as her PA, are worried. They mention it to Ellery’s friend Dylan, who helps organize the festival, and Dylan immediately hires Ellery to investigate the matter (the police being out of question as Lara won’t hear of it). Before Ellery can find even the tiniest clue, though, those threats become reality. Lara narrowly escapes two attempts on her life within twenty-four hours. Worse, Dylan’s rather insufferable girlfriend is found bludgeoned to death at home. And guess who’s the one who actually finds her? Bingo—Ellery.
As happy as I was to plunge head-first into the cosy atmosphere of Pirate’s Cove with its quirky inhabitants and its unusual share of dead bodies, I was for once a bit underwhelmed by this novel. After reading books one to five, I knew which boxes I expected to be ticked, and most of them were. The singular location. The unique islander mood. The Silver Sleuths, Ellery’s circle of friends, who love nothing more than to stick their noses where they shouldn’t. The landscapes, the houses, the weather. Watson, Ellery’s puppy. Ellery’s relationship with mostly-but-not-always taciturn Jack and their dichotomy of rural man-rock versus higher-strung urbanite-turned-villager. The crime(s) to solve. The slow sprinkling of clues.
But. For once, I missed the usual Josh Lanyon sparkle. The magic touch of words. The subtle lure of false trails. The book lacked the enthusiasm I enjoy so much in Josh’s work. It felt as if the author hadn’t been really invested in writing it, as if this had been a self-inflicted compulsory exercise rather than a deliberate action of joyful writing. There were way too many characters involved in the plot, which also remained under-engaging, and most of them could have been fleshed out to make them stand out. The storyline seemed promising but fell flat toward the ending, which had a very rushed feeling. Whilst the murder mystery as well as the attempted murder mystery were brought to a conclusion I found satisfying enough, the solution for another subplot (the death threats) didn’t convince me at all. I surprised myself staring at my Kindle and mumbling, “Are you kidding me? All that for that?” Last but not least, I found the book very poorly proofread, too. Names were misspelt, words were missing or erroneously duplicated, which became quite distracting after a while.
In a nutshell, I must say this was not one of Josh Lanyon’s best. Oddly enough, however, I went through the pages as if I were famished, finishing it much faster than I expected. Which goes to show that even though the overall impression was a tad disappointing, I enjoyed the book nonetheless. And I’m genuinely looking forward to starting the next instalment.
DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book was bought by the reviewer.
Format | ebook, print and audio |
Length | Novel, 213 pages |
Heat Level | |
Publication Date | 30-March-2023 |
Price | $5.99 ebook, $11.24 paperback, $17.46 audio book |
Buy Link | https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C13L19WB |