Murder Takes the High Road

Murder Takes the High Road (2018) Josh Lanyon

I believe this is the first story I read by Josh Lanyon. IIRC I chose it because it was a mystery, and had a M/M romance.

Carter Matheson is on a Tours to Die For trip through Scotland that was supposed to be a birthday present for him and his boyfriend. Now Carter is on his own and Trevor is there with the guy who replaced Carter. But Carter loves Vanessa Rayburn’s mysteries, and is not interested in giving his ticket to Vance, the New Guy.

“That’s St. Patrick’s,” the cabbie said. “A Polish girl was murdered there about ten years ago. Her killer buried her under the confessional.”

If he’d hoped to shock us, he was talking to the wrong bunch of tourists.

If that isn’t difficult enough, he ends up with a roommate at the last minute, and has to share a room with a stranger for the rest of the trip.

There is a fascinating thread to this story, which is that as a teenager, Vanessa Rayburn killed her boyfriend, and served time for the murder. The obvious parallel here is Anne Perry, and there is a lot of discussion about guilt, culpability, time served, and if you can ever move beyond your past.

I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, which was I’d somehow— although I knew it was illogical— expected someone more… quiet, penitent. Someone who seemed to show awareness and regret for having committed the ultimate offense of murdering another human.

The other thread is what an asshole Trevor is. And BOY is he a complete jerk.

Despite having been the one who had the affair and was breaking off our relationship, he had continually treated me like the bad guy, the villain, the untrustworthy one. I didn’t know if that was his way of handling guilt— convincing himself that even his infidelity was somehow my fault?— or if he just really was a complete jerk.

But that’s fine, because Carter is adorable, things work out for him in the end, and the mystery is pretty good. That combined with the other threads made this a really interesting story, and one I enjoyed re-reading.

Publisher: Carina Press
Rating: 8.5/10

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