Kenny Long is living a new
life. Blinded in an accident, he has taken control of his unexpected reality
the best way he can, and it’s working out better than he hoped.
Of course, Larry Boots
doesn’t know any of that. All he sees is a beautiful man sitting on a park
bench.
Larry has a few problems
of his own: his mother. His job. The lack of romance in his life.
His job. In the course of
that job, Larry strikes up a friendship with Kenny. The next thing he knows,
he’s so head-over-heels in love, even his mother doesn’t seem so bad. Of
course, his career is still a problem, but he’s working on that. Hopefully, he’ll have the problem resolved before the man he’s being paid to murder
succeeds in murdering him first.
And before the man he loves
finds out he’s a cold-blooded killer.
Buy links: Dreamspinner Amazon
Cat gives
this one 4 Meows with a 4 Purr heat index...
Larry Boots is an
exterminator, but bugs aren’t he forte. No, he rights wrongs and exterminates
creatures lower than the vilest bugs. Humans that get away with murder.
Especially child-killers. He knows what he does is wrong, and he cries after it
which shows his humanity and kind nature.
On a stakeout watching a man make sure he thinks he is still a threat, he meets Ken, a blind teacher. They become fast friends and soon develop a
relationship.
John Inman developed some
awesome characters in this book. I mean how can a cold-blooded killer be so likable.
But John made it happen. Kenny is adorable and snarky and OMG Larry’s mom is a
hoot.
The storyline is good,
the action is good, and the wit helps lighten the darkness of murder.
If you like a good M/M
romance with a touch of suspense, action, and unusual characters with a great
happy ending this is for you.
Excerpt…
Chapter OneCALL ME Ishmael.
Nah, just kidding. Call me Larry. Larry Boots.
I’m pushing thirty and growing a beard that, at the moment, looks kind of scruffy. Also, I shaved my head last week out of sheer boredom, so now I look like a cue ball with algae growing on the bottom of it. When I have hair on my head, it’s brown and drab. So are my eyes. Brown and drab. I stand about six feet tall, and I have a little patch of freckles that scatter across the bridge of my nose, which I spent two months in high school trying to eliminate with fading cream. Didn’t work, of course. My mother told me it wouldn’t. She also told me my freckles were cute, and I should leave them alone.
So now I leave them alone.
My mother also once told me I’d grow out of this gay phase I was going through. As you can imagine, that didn’t work out so well. I’m still as gay as a maypole. Well, perhaps a little butcher than a maypole. At least I hope I am. Not that being swishy is a character fault. I have a couple of friends who couldn’t walk a straight line without flipping something if their lives depended on it.
I’m between boyfriends at the moment, but I still have my mother. I mean, I don’t live with her or anything, but she’s still around. We reside in San Diego. She’s on one side of town; I’m on the other. Happily, it’s a pretty big town. A lot of acreage. Praise Allah. She tells all her friends I’m a software developer. I love that. One day out of the blue I told her, “Yeah, Mom, I’m a software developer,” and she believed me. I’ve never been to college or business school in my life, so I don’t know how she thought I learned the trade. Osmosis?
My mom still goes by her married name. Mrs. Bootchinski. Gladys Bootchinski. After about twenty years, that Bootchinski tag started to irk me, so I shortened it. Now I’m plain old Larry Boots. Much nicer. Of course, every time my mom has to use my new-and-improved last name, she gets this look on her face like I’ve just launched another invasion on her beloved Poland. By the way, she has never set foot in Poland and probably never will, since prying her more than ten feet away from her TV set and her beloved soaps is like pulling teeth.
Anyhoo…
The reason I lied to my mother about what I do for a living is pretty simple. I didn’t want her to know the truth. If I did tell her what I do to earn a buck, she would probably pull one of those aghast faces she’s so proficient at. She’s been using those faces on me since I was old enough to walk, and frankly, they’ve grown annoying. Not that I don’t love my mom. I do. It’s just that as the years accrue, it gets harder and harder to work up a good dose of sonly adoration, not to mention gathering the wherewithal to lay it on her out of the blue. I need time to get in the mood. And if you knew my mom, you’d know she doesn’t give anybody a lot of time to adjust. Interactions with my mother are like the rear-end collisions you don’t see coming. One big bam, and there you are, lying in a ditch with a spare tire up your butt.
Well, maybe she’s not quite that bad. Oh wait. Yes, she is.
I adjusted the right lens of my binoculars a smidgeon since things were getting a bit blurry on that side. Also, the tree I was sitting in had been digging into my backside for the last thirty minutes, and I wondered if it was doing irreparable damage to my perky little butt. Not that my butt is really that perky anymore. Or maybe it is. Heaven knows I work out religiously trying to keep myself fit. In my line of work, my real line of work, you sort of need to.
But enough about me.
With the binoculars properly adjusted I could see the man sitting in the battered old Econoline van more clearly now. He was probably pushing fifty, way overweight, with scraggly gray hair and a paunchy jawline bristling with what looked like a week’s worth of patchy, untrimmed facial hair. Even a fashionista like me (that was a joke) could look at the guy and see he wasn’t trying to grow a beard. He was simply too lazy to shave. Actually, he didn’t look like he was too diligent about taking the occasional bath either. And his van didn’t appear to have been run through a car wash since it rolled off the assembly line sometime back in the eighties. Jeez. Let’s face it, the guy was a slob.
What I really detested about the man I was watching was the arm casually dangling out the driver’s-side window. There was a trail of smoke dribbling up from the lit cigarette he held in his hand, but that wasn’t what bothered me. What bothered me was the tattoo he sported on his forearm of two naked cherubs. They were innocently frolicking in a patch of arm hair.
I stared a long time at those two cherubs on the forearm of the man in the van. And the longer I stared, the angrier I became.
The tree I sat in was a tall eucalyptus, situated alongside the Blind Community Center just off Park Boulevard in the North Park section of the city. I was perched about twenty feet up, Reeboks swinging. Since there was a cluster of other eucalyptus trees surrounding me, I was pretty well hidden. The van I sat eyeballing was parked 400 yards away, across the boulevard. It was nestled up to the curb beside Roosevelt Middle School, right where you’d expect a pervert like Jackson Boils to be parked. The students had been set free for the day, and through my trusty binoculars, I could see Jackson Boils leering at every prepubescent child who pranced past, be they male or female. Obviously Boils was an equal opportunity pervert, which in my book made him doubly despicable.
John Inman is a Lambda
Literary Award finalist and the author of over thirty novels, everything from
outrageous comedies to tales of ghosts and monsters and heart-stopping
romances. John Inman has been writing fiction since he was old enough to hold a
pencil. He and his partner live in beautiful San Diego, California. Together,
they share a passion for theater, books, hiking and biking along the trails and
canyons of San Diego or, if the mood strikes, simply kicking back with a beer and
a movie.
John's advice for anyone
who wishes to be a writer? "Set time aside to write every day and do it.
Don't be afraid to share what you've written. Feedback is important. When a
rejection slip comes in, just tear it up and try again. Keep mailing stuff out.
Keep writing and rewriting and then rewrite one more time. Every minute of the
struggle is worth it in the end, so don't give up. Ever. Remember that
publishers are a lot like lovers. Sometimes you have to look a long time to
find the one that's right for you."
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The premise sounds really good. Thank you for the review!
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