Review: Cut & Run by Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux

Cut & Run by Madeleine Urban and Abigail RouxFormat read: print book borrowed from the Library
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: M/M romance, mystery/thriller
Series: Cut & Run
Length: 376 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Date Released: September 1, 2008
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

A series of murders in New York City has stymied the police and FBI alike, and they suspect the culprit is a single killer sending an indecipherable message. But when the two federal agents assigned to the investigation are taken out, the FBI takes a more personal interest in the case.

Special Agent Ty Grady is pulled out of undercover work after his case blows up in his face. He’s cocky, abrasive, and indisputably the best at what he does. But when he’s paired with Special Agent Zane Garrett, it’s hate at first sight. Garrett is the perfect image of an agent: serious, sober, and focused, which makes their partnership a classic cliché: total opposites, good cop-bad cop, the odd couple. They both know immediately that their partnership will pose more of an obstacle than the lack of evidence left by the murderer.

Practically before their special assignment starts, the murderer strikes again – this time at them. Now on the run, trying to track down a man who has focused on killing his pursuers, Grady and Garrett will have to figure out how to work together before they become two more notches in the murderer’s knife.

My Review:

First we have the typical buddy-cop scenario, one agent is completely buttoned-down and by-the-numbers; and the other one blows off all the rules but closes so damn many cases that the constant insubordination is just barely tolerated.

We’ve seen this play before. Of course they can barely stand each other. Of course the rule-breaker pushes the buttoned-down agent’s buttons until they explode.

Of course they’ve been assigned to work together because their approaches to a case complement the heck out of each other. Analytical mind meets gut instinct, or so it seems.

Then they switch personas in the middle of the case, and nothing is as it seemed. Except that they still need each other to solve the case. And they just plain still need each other.

I left gender out of the above description deliberately. Without adding a romance, Cut & Run might have worked as merely a buddy-cop story. There is a serial killer on the loose, and the FBI is dragged in to solve the case. Once they’re in, the finger starts pointing to a crooked agent (or a crazy agent) in their own house.

As mystery/thriller, Cut & Run would still have worked. There was plenty of tension to go around. A standard romantic suspense with a male/female pair of agents might have been possible. For an example where it does work and the female is treated as an equal, just look at Kensi and Deeks in NCIS: LA. But I’d submit (no pun intended) that Marty Deeks is definitely the beta fish in that school of sharks.

Instead of doing anything that would have been remotely standard, Urban and Roux took their mystery/suspense/thriller story and threw their two male FBI agents into a highly dysfunctional romantic relationship. I say highly dysfunctional because both Ty Grady and Zane Garrett are themselves dysfunctional human beings throughout the story. They are both fantastic agents, but as humans, they need a lot of work.

And as FBI agents at the top of a very competitive food chain, they are both used to being top dogs. Once they enter into a relationship with each other, no matter how on-again/off-again, they constantly jockey for the position of top.

While someone else is showing off their particular prowess as a serial killer for their own express amusement.

Escape Rating B+: I found Cut & Run to be a compelling mystery/thriller with two flawed men as the romantic leads. I will admit that I did figure out “whodunnit” long before Grady and Garrett did, but that wasn’t the point for me, the point was in watching them figure out not just whether they could work together, but sometimes simply whether they could manage to work at all, either personally or professionally.

I enjoy mystery/suspense/romantic suspense a lot. But even with a dominant couple in the picture, I find it more fun when there is a solid support network to follow. I hope that these two develop some reliable backup, because they surely do need it.

They are not merely stronger together, they are pretty damn co-dependent. Watching them negotiate a relationship is going to fun, at least from the reader’s perspective. Now that I’ve started, I understand why so many people recommend this series.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Gravedigger’s Brawl by Abigail Roux

Format read:ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: Trade paperback, ebook
Genre: Horror, Mystery/Suspense
Length: 256 pages
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Date Released: October 15, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Dr. Wyatt Case is never happier than when he’s walking the halls of his history museum. Playing wingman for his best friend at Gravedigger’s Tavern throws him way out of his comfort zone, but not as much as the eccentric man behind the bar, Ash Lucroix.

Ash is everything Wyatt doesn’t understand: exuberant, quirky, and elbow deep in a Gaslight lifestyle that weaves history into everyday life. He coordinates his suspenders with his tongue rings. Within hours, Wyatt and Ash are hooked.

But strange things are afoot at Gravedigger’s, and after a knock to the head, Ash starts seeing things that can’t be explained by old appliances or faulty wiring. Soon everyone at Gravedigger’s is wondering if they’re seeing ghosts, or just going crazy. The answer to that question could end more than just Wyatt and Ash’s fragile relationship—it might also end their lives.

The Gravedigger’s Brawl is a massive Halloween bash that takes place in Gravedigger’s Tavern. Where is that, you might ask? The historic district in downtown Richmond, Virginia.

So we have an eerily named bar in a historic preservation district on the spookiest night of the year. And did I mention that everyone who works in the bar has started seeing ghosts? That’s right, ghosts. Poltergeists aren’t just thumping the walls, they have started screwing with the electrical wiring. That’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Gravedigger’s Tavern doesn’t just have a weird name, it has some bad stuff in its history. It might be linked to the LaLaurie family in antebellum New Orleans. They were so evil, even their fellow slaveholders turned them in for their human experiments.

Richmond had its own version of the LaLauries, the Dubois family. It looks like they owned the land that Gravedigger’s sits on. One of the Dubois’ might still haunt the place, along with all of his victims.

The Gravedigger’s Brawl is a terrific, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, as in terrifying, ghost story. Spirits do haunt Gravedigger’s, and one man, Ash Lucroix, acquires the ability to see them, after a head injury.

Unfortunately for Ash, he’s not paranoid. One of them really is out to get him.

So is Wyatt Case, but that’s in a good way. The director of the historical society, although he might have been out of the closet for a long time, has an incredibly difficult time getting out of his shell. His academic reserve is a different problem all-together.

Opposites do attract. The academic introvert and the flair-expert, bartending extrovert with the gaslight aesthetic do take hesitant steps toward a relationship.

Meanwhile there are the ghosts. As more mysterious thumps and sparks manifest in the tavern, Wyatt starts researching the history of Gravedigger’s. (He’s a historian, it’s what he does). He finds paydirt. Or gravedirt. Amidst the urban legends, ghost tours and fanciful tales, he finds the Dubois family, and their misbegotten scion Vincent.

Vincent conducted human experiments on the land that is now Gravedigger’s. And every couple of decades since Vincent’s death, someone connected with that property has died, on the premises, of suicide. All under very mysterious circumstances.

And they’ve all looked very much like Ash Lucroix. So did Vincent Dubois. And it’s starting to seem a lot like Ash is next. Unless the bar burns down first.

Escape Rating A-: And a very chilling story this one is. The chills and thrills in this story come from the ghosts. The romance, although it exists, takes a back-seat to the ghost story.

I found the secondary story about saving Wyatt’s job at the Museum, and museum politics in general, to be hilarious and all-too-familiar. All non-profit institutions have some similarities. Wyatt’s co-worker Nash, especially his love of true-but-obscure facts, is laugh-out-loud funny.

This was a perfect Halloween read. It’s chilling and scary and terrifying. There are ghosts, and a fire, and a fight in the museum (in costume!). And in the end, what’s important gets saved.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Ebook Review Central, Multi-publisher, August 2012

Welcome to the Ebook Review Central multi-publisher wrap-up post for the titles published in August 2012. This week’s edition covers the output from Amber Quill Press, Astraea Press, Curiosity Quills, Liquid Silver and Riptide for the month of August. Red Sage didn’t publish anything new this month.

This is also my multi-conundrum post. Out of six possible publishers, not all of whom have output in any given month, there are entirely too many months, like this one, where Riptide publishes three titles and absolutely sweeps the featured titles. No other publisher has titles that received more than four reviews, and there were way too many ones and zeroes, all over.

Why am I bringing this up right now? I’m moving to Seattle in November, and starting a full-time job in early December. Some things will have to re-arranged. I will continue Ebook Review Central, but for publishers where there are regularly no reviews, or very few reviews, to report, I’m going to have to make some decisions about priorities.

Multiple reviews on Goodreads or Amazon, even when they exist, do not count on Ebook Review Central. Why? Because many reviewers cross-post their reviews on Goodreads, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. When we receive review copies from publishers, the publishers generally make that request specifically.

All of this week’s featured titles were from Riptide. While I would have liked to have spread the featured titles out a bit, Riptide absolutely ran so far ahead of the pack, it wasn’t remotely possible. And good on them and their publicity department/review coordinators as well as the authors for getting their books out there.

Featured title number one is Anne Tenino’s Love, Hypothetically. I’ll say up front that the reviews weren’t universally good, but there were simply a ton of them. When this many people are talking (and writing), the book is worth looking at just to get in on the conversation! Love, Hypothetically is the sequel to Frat Boy and Toppy, and is a story of reunited lovers. Paul and Trevor were high school boyfriends who veered way off track. Trevor chose a major league baseball career instead of coming out, but threw Paul pretty much under the bus on his way. Now the big career is over and Trevor is back in town and he wants a second chance with his first love. See Under the Covers for the wow review and Avon Romance for the meh vote.

Almost all of the 16 reviews for the number two feature were raves. I’m talking about Aleksandr Voinov’s look back at two German flyers during World War II, Skybound. Even though this is a time and/or a side that many people avoid like the plague (as my fellow Book Lover Caro put it) every one who read this one fell in love with the characters and saw it as a beautiful story of love and courage, set in dark and desperate times.

Coming in at number three was the book I expected to be number one, which says something about the strength of the competition this week. Anything that could beat out the latest entry in the Cut & Run series has to have been pretty damn good. Because the number three title for this week is Stars & Stripes by Abigail Roux, the 6th book in the Cut & Run series. Everyone who reviewed this one absolutely loved it, but that’s not a surprise. By six books in, everyone reviewing is deeply invested in the series. The series started as a mystery/suspense series about two FBI agents, Ty Grady and Zane Garrett, who have absolutely opposite working styles and one hell of a lot of sexual tension. During a significant part of the series, it’s a question whether they’re going to fall into bed or get each other killed, or both. The series is meant to be read in order, starting with Cut & Run, and highly recommended by pretty much everyone who has ever reviewed it.

We’ll be back! Next week! Carina Press, September 2012. The Frankenstorm will not bring me down.

Selecting the best romance ebooks of 2011

Last week I volunteered to select the best romance ebooks of 2011 for Library Journal. The article that resulted from the endeavor was posted at LJ this morning under the title: Librarian’s Best Books of 2011: Ebook Romance, with my picture and everything. Yes, I’m rather chuffed about the whole thing, as the Brits would say.

How did this come about? I review ebook romances for Library Journal. I am a librarian, and I asked to be a reviewer when they started their ebook romance review program this summer. LJ has, like every book review source, been posting their “best of 2011” lists this month. They’ve also been posting “Librarian’s best” guest posts. Since they have only been reviewing ebooks since August, they didn’t have a full year of ebook romance reviewing to work with. When I volunteered to write one for them, they were happy.

But about the books, and the selecting of them. They had to be ebooks, they had to be romances, and I could only pick five. And they had to be 2011 books. I stretched a couple of those definitions just a tad. There was no requirement that they be books reviewed in LJ. Actually, that was the point. LJ wanted me to go through my archives and find stuff I knew about that they didn’t, because I cover more of the ebook “waterfront” with Ebook Review Central, and I’ve been reviewing ebooks longer.

I chose the books in order by time, earliest to latest, plus the one I snuck in and hoped it would stick, which it did. It’s not generally thought of as a romance, but well, some of us think it is.

1. Goddess with a Blade by Lauren Dane, published by Carina Press. Reviewed on June 20, 2011. Urban Fantasy. Escape Rating A.

Goddess was one of the first books I reviewed for NetGalley. And I remembered it in detail six months later.  Every time my editor at LJ asked me if there would ever be a starred review of an ebook (before Serenity Woods’ White-Hot Christmas finally got one) Goddess with a Blade was always my example. Absolutely terrific kick-ass heroine, and great urban fantasy world-building. I hope there are more.

2. Turn it Up by Inez Kelley, also published by Carina Press. Reviewed on August 10, 2011. Contemporary Romance. Escape Rating A.

I reviewed a similar book for LJ, but Turn it Up was just so much better that I cited Turn it Up in my review as the one people should read instead! This was a marvelous “friends-into-lovers” story. And very, very funny.

3. Queenie’s Brigade by Heather Massey, published by Red Sage Publishing. Reviewed on October 10, 2011. Science Fiction Romance. Escape Rating A.

Queenie’s Brigade is terrific science fiction romance. When I wrote my review, I got sucked into reading it a second time, and I’d just finished it! The last rebel spaceship escapes to the last prison planet to try to turn convicts into soldiers. Sort of like the Dirty Dozen in space. Except nowhere near that easy. If you like science fiction romance, get this book.

4. Divide & Conquer (Cut & Run book 4) by Abigail Roux and Madeleine Urban, published by Dreamspinner Press. M/M Romance, Mystery/Suspense. Featured on Ebook Review Central, Dreamspinner October Books, November 28, 2011. Ratings from 4/5 to 5/5 at 8 reviewers.

I crowdsourced this selection to Ebook Review Central. The reviews weren’t just positive, they were glowing. And not just for this book, but for the whole series. It made me put the first book in the series, Cut & Run, on my TBR list. There are paperbacks available for this series, so I was stretching the ebook-only definition just a bit, but no one minded.

5. Beekeeping for Beginners by Laurie R. King, published by Bantam. Mystery. Discussed in the post The Beekeeper and his Apprentice on July 6, 2011.

This was the one that was the sneak. Technically, this isn’t a romance. But the Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell concept definitely is. And anyone who can read what he did for her and say he hadn’t already started to love her, even if he didn’t know it himself, doesn’t have a romantic bone in their body.

I loved creating this list for LJ, but because they had to be all ebooks, there were lots of things that I read and loved this year that were ineligible. Why?  Because they were really “p as in print” books. Or they were older books I finally got around to this year (hello, Elantra!) So later this month I’ll do a personal “best of 2011” list.