Short Stories: 2007 – 2013

Short Stories: 2007 – 2013 (2015) Josh Lanyon

This is a short story collection (obviously, from the name) but to be clear, these aren’t mysteries like most of her longer works I’ve read. It wasn’t a bad thing, just different.

Perfect Day
A Limited Engagement
In Sunshine or In Shadow
The French Have a Word for It
In a Dark Wood
Until We Meet Once More
Heart Trouble
In Plain Sight

Perfect Day finds Graham and Wyatt on a camping trip–and possibly at the end of their relationship, as Graham is still in love with his previous lover, who died unexpectedly.

“If it was — if I was — it would be someone like you.”

Someone like me. But not me. Obviously not me.

Funny that of all the things he said that morning, that hurt the most.

I know people who have lost partners, and was hard for them to move on.

A Limited Engagement was a surprisingly difficult story.

He followed me inside, shaking his wet, black hair out of his eyes. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and his hands were red from the cold. His Joseph Abboud overcoat dripped in a silent puddle around his expensively shod feet. “I am going to kill you,” he said carefully and quietly, and he launched himself at me.

I jumped back, my foot slipped on the little oriental throw rug, and I went down, crashing into the walnut side table, knocking it — and the globe lamp atop it — over. The lamp smashed on the wooden floor, shards of painted flowers scattering down the hallway.

Ross’s cold hands locked around my throat. Big hands, powerful hands — hands that could stroke and soothe and tease and tantalize — tightened, choking me. I clawed at his wrists, squirming, wriggling, trying to break his hold.

I get (mostly) why Adam acted as he did. And why Ross reacted as he did. It was just that there could be reconciliation so quickly.

In Sunshine or In Shadow. Kiernan and Rick are cops and partners–and for a short while had been more, but an incident on the job changed things for both of them, and so Kiernan has decided to move on (and justifiably so) and begins his new chapter with a trip to Ireland.

The French Have a Word for It finds two men reunited after a decade apart. Thomas, the bodyguard, and Colin the teen he rescued and guarded.

I really really liked Thomas here: his recognition of both their age differences when they parted, as well as the dynamic of hero worship between them.

In a Dark Wood was a mystery, of a young man who saw something disturbing as a kid, and the police officer who wants to discover the mystery and perhaps save Tim from himself.

Although there are mystery elements, the heart of the story is what Tim saw as a kid, and how it continued to affect him, regardless of whether he chose to admit it or not.

“Please tell me you’re just the same sober.”

The merry-go-round slowed…slowed…glided gradually to a stop. It was nice to lie there like that, skin on skin, listening to the faraway chirp of crickets and frogs. His words finally registered. I laughed and lifted my head. “It’s moot. I’m never sober.”

His mouth was a kiss away. He said wryly, “You think you’re joking.”

Until We Meet Once More is a military story, and has a lot of boinking, but which was kinda integral to the story, of how the two men saw and felt about each other, and how their youth and the world in which they grew up drove them apart. (And the chance encounter that put them back together.)

Heart Trouble was troublesome for me, because of the issues inherent in a doctor patient relationship.

In Plain Sight was a mystery / missing persons story, of two law men and the difficulties of being day in such a masculine environment.

All in all it was an interesting anthology.
Publisher: JustJoshin Publishing, Inc.

Rating: 7.5/10

• Browse the archives:
  
• Half-Resurrection Blues, Audio Edition » »
• « « Unto Us a Son Is Given