Title: Dead Run: Dangerous Ground 4
Author: Josh Lanyon
Cover Artist: April Martinez
Publisher: Loose Id
Amazon: N/A
Genre: Contemporary M/M, Action/Adventure
Length: novella/40,650 words/150 PDF pages
Rating: 5 stars out of 5
Review Summary: A most excellent adventure of the heart.
THE BLURB
The boys are back in town — and Paris is burning!
For Special Agents of the Department of Diplomatic Security, Taylor MacAllister and Will Brandt, the strain of a long distance relationship is beginning to tell after eleven months of separation. A romantic holiday could be just the thing to bridge the ever-growing distance, but when Taylor spots a terrorist from the 70s, long believed dead but very much alive, it’s c’est la vie.
Now instead of sipping wine and seeing the sights, the boys are chasing a wily and deadly foe through the graveyards and catacombs of Paris.
Of course, it could always be worse — and soon it is.
THE REVIEW
Whenever a series reaches book 3 or 4 authors usually reveal some crucial points in the story arc that are cross roads for their characters and the series. This was definitely the case in Dead Heat, book 4 in the Dangerous Ground series, as a number of internal conflicts between our heroes – personal vs professional differences, ex boyfriends, job priorities – all take center stage and each fights for top billing.
When I reviewed Dangerous Ground the first book of this series in May, 2008 I fell in love with Taylor and Will, Special Agents with the Department of Diplomatic Security. At that time they had been partners for 3 years and their friendship and partnership were in danger of being severed because Taylor had the audacity to confess to Will that he was in love with him, and a few hours later he had the bad luck to be shot, which reinforced Will’s feelings that personal and professional relationships should never overlap. Much has happened since then. Two books later they are lovers, but a year into the relationship Will accepted a promotion to Paris and they haven’t seen each other since.
Dead Run opens with Taylor and Will reuniting in Paris for the first time since Will volunteered for his plum 2 year assignment. But before Taylor even left the US he committed the ultimate faux pas of stopping a plane from taking off because he thought he saw someone on an old terrorist list, someone long thought to be dead, among the crush of passengers waiting to board his flight. Not a good move if you’re not positive about your facts. 🙂
As I said in my review of Blood Heat, the third book in this series, “a new book by Josh Lanyon is like a box of dark chocolates because behind the delicious rush as it hits my tongue will be the bittersweet, melting, rich orgasmic flavour, and this series is definitely the darkest chocolate.” Will and Taylor have a synergy and charisma that’s hard to top. Despite their somewhat exotic jobs they have their feet firmly planted on the ground and their love for each other is what makes them vulnerable, the opposite of the confident Special Agent persona that they are on the job. Having to hide their relationship gives it the ambiance of excitement and danger which makes the characters appear to be just one step ahead of disaster, especially Taylor who is hot headed and usually acts first before he thinks things through. This time it’s Will who has bursts of uncharacteristic rashness which is like waving a red flag in front of Taylor.
The plot is complicated and I won’t go into a long explanation about it since that would spoil the fun for you. In this review I want to highlight the difficulties Will and Taylor face a year later in trying to pick up where they left off. Would the love between them survive their separation seamlessly, or would minor irritants like an ex (David Bradley) who is still buzzing around Will destroy Taylor’s trust in his lover, an essential element of their personal and work partnerships? There is also the major issue of job conflicts as two high energy, career focused professionals try to juggle love and career. All I will say about the plot is that a small-time and mostly unknown terrorist group from 40 years ago provides the opportunity for the usual Police and Secret Service involvement as they race to prevent disaster and death, which serves as a backdrop for Will and Taylor as they try to figure out how to ensure that misunderstandings don’t spoil their first vacation in a year and taint their relationship.
At the heart of the book are the uncertainty and vulnerability Taylor feels about Will putting his career above their love for each other, and the bad taste from that decision colours everything Will says and does. The distance between them keeps growing and nothing Will does to try and bridge the gulf is working. They had always been able to talk to each other but this time it seems that everything they say makes their misunderstandings worse. This tension is not helped by an injury to Will which highlights Taylor’s concerns and questions about whether Will is committed to him and their relationship.
Having visited Paris in the distant past I was happy to do so again in Dead Run which Lanyon brought to life in the world he created. All of the French touches were there and the atmosphere was colourful and alive, from the history, the architecture, the language, the crazy drivers and the overpriced food – no detail was overlooked and I definitely felt a sense of place. For Taylor, the first things he noticed were the subtle French touches in Will’s appearance – the elegant clothes, different haircut, a facility with the language etc. which were disconcerting and made it seem as if he and Will were out of sync. Were these changes merely superficial or a sign of something ominous such as Will’s desire to extend his stay in Paris?
There were many surprises in the book including a possible new assignment that Taylor was considering, and this made Will see red and react in a way that was not consistent with his usual sober, level headed conservative approach. Not the way to make Taylor see his point of view and another sign of internal conflict and differences which Lanyon shows with many deft touches of prose and dialogue.
The sex was at times off the charts which demonstrates that the author is getting a lot more adventurous with his MCs sexually, something that definitely adds spice to their relationship.
I did have a couple of niggles and one was the quick kiss shared by Will and Taylor in the armory vault. The kiss was hot but it seemed uncharacteristic and dangerous to do so at work since there could have been cameras around. Also, a lot of the prose was devoted initially to describing the city, and while most of the background was necessary to set the stage, some readers who are more interested in the story than the location may feel it’s a lot of information. There’s always a fine line between deciding what’s just enough and sounding like a travel brochure but on balance I think Dead Run didn’t go over the line. Some scenes that I liked were the search through the Paris catacombs – eerie and claustrophobic – the location was used almost as if it were another character; the chase through the tombs at the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery at midnight was similarly well constructed and imaginative as it provided atmosphere and danger in a location that’s visited by hundreds of thousands of travellers annually.
The care that Josh Lanyon takes with his supporting characters is one of the reasons that sets his books apart. In Dead Run Marie Laroche, girlfriend or ex wife of the main suspect was very well drawn, in terms of her physical appearance “like a scary grandma with her gravelly smoker’s voice and tattooed eyeliner …. she looked like she cut her hair herself with the hatchet she used to decapitate chickens.”
What was most remarkable was the growth of the romance alongside that of Will and Taylor as protagonists, and the ending will shock and surprise you. Talk about a cliff hanger!
Highly recommended!
I stayed up late last night and read it. I also liked it. Great review!
You must be a very fast reader Lasha. I’m as slow as molasses. 😆
Thanks for the nice words. Josh always brings out the best in me. I’m even more fond of this series now than AE.
I still haven’t read the AE series – the only thing of Josh’s I haven’t read – but I love Will and Taylor. (I also want David to fall off a cliff. *g*). But the end of this book was perfect.
I know why you haven’t read the AE series. lol. However it’s well worth it. I didn’t read the books until about 18 months after Loose Id released them. I read the first 3 books on a weekend and did a joint review of the series up to that point with a fellow blogger, MaryM.
Poor David – he needs a man of his own. 🙂 The ending was perfect.
LASHA,
OMG! I so, so envy you because when you do read the series, all else pales in comparison.
Yes, there are many good/great stories out there…but Adrien & Jake?
What are you waiting for???????????????
OH OH OH! By cliffhanger, I hope you mean more Will & Tay to come! I love these guys!
Great review w/o giving too much away, you highlighted points that make Joshs writing stand out; the characters that are just so REAL but still are flawed, lovable, and complex and make you want to know more about them; images and scenes that make you believe you are there (and also keep you checking around the corner or making sure the lights are all on :eek:)…I still get the creeps over that crypt scene from “The Darkling Thrush”…
As for the kiss in the vault, well adrenaline baby! , makes you do foolish things 😀
YEA, Can’t wait to read this!
My lips are sealed. I can’t say what the cliffhanger is and you have to promise not to flip to the end because you will spoil your enjoyment of the story. It’s all good. lol.
I tried not to give away much of the plot except to mention a couple of exciting scenes. The key to this book is the fractured relationship between Taylor and Will and you will be surprised at how much they have changed.
Happy reading.
No way would I read the ending 1st, that would be like opening Christmas presents the week before!….
Thats another thing I love about Joshs characters, they change and evolve from the first novel, but I embrace and look forward to those changes and the path it takes to get them there.
I´m tempted to go to the ending first, I´m pretty good at that 😆
Thank you for your review 😎
Well this is an action/adventure and mystery as well as a romance and I think that reading the ending spoils the book, but that’s just me. 🙂
I´m afraid I enjoy the books all the same 😉
Although, you know how sometimes there are previews of other books just at the very end? It has shocked me more that once :hysterics:
Ok, ok, I will be a good girl this time :girl:
Thank you again for sharing your views of this book 🙂
Some previews are like the blurbs – they reveal spoilers. Don’t like them!
I look forward to hearing from you after you finish the book and you have to tell me if it was worth it not to fast forward to the end. 🙂
:wave: Wave, I cheated 👿 I didn´t look the ending :angel: but while re-reading 1-3, I had time enough to read other comments around 😯 Don´t worry, spoilers don´t spoil the book for me 😀 And of course it makes a (huge) difference to actually read the book, that, btw, I loved :bravo:
The kiss? Just perfect, I think the moment was asking for one no matter where :love2:
But I didn´t felt much of a cliffhanger there 😮 more of an ending with some openings that can lead to anything by vol5: there are at least a couple of possibilities I can think of 😕
Thank you again for your review, sometimes I slack off on giving feedback :doh: but it´s always a pleasure to visit the site 😎
Hi Helena
I’m glad you didn’t really cheat although you tiptoed around it. lol.
I loved the kiss but my only concern was if they were caught on camera they wouldn’t be able to work together anymore at the Agency.
Re the “cliffhanger” I should have probably said “totally unexpected ending” which it was. But a very nice one. However there was still a cliffhanger as such in terms of their future plans.
I’m happy you like the review and thank you for commenting — you’re very good about that. 🙂
You know, it’s not like Josh doesn’t have his personal readers’ torture chamber – remember AE 3? – but this is really him going out of his way, lol. First he ends the book with a cliffhanger and then he takes a year off. Oh, sweet waiting… 😀
I’m joking, of course, because he needs a break (when I’ve read the number of books he published, I wanted to faint) and this means more Will and Taylor in the future. :hurray2: I’m glad you chose not to go into details, but gave us enough highlights. I can’t wait to read this!
He does like to torture us. AE 3 was one book I didn’t really like very much because although it was in character for Jake to do what he did I thought it was mean.
However, here it’s all good and even the cliffhanger at the end of Blood Heat could not compare to AE 3.
I think you will definitely enjoy DG 4 even though the story is more about Will’s and Taylor’s relationship than it is about the mystery. 😮
Great review Wave! I downloaded Dead Run last night the second it was available (of course I did – the way Josh has been mercilessly teasing us on his FB fanpage for weeks) and just finished reading it after locking myself in my office for some hours today. Love how Josh focuses on relationships and this was a great one for that. I could really empathize with both Will and Taylor and what they were trying to work through. There was a clue about the ending a bit prior to it that I was glad turned out to be what I hoped – the ending spoke volumes aside from the obvious 😉
Hi Dianne
Thank you.
I tried not to give too much away but I really wanted to concentrate on the relationship between Will and Taylor since they were having more difficulties than the norm in this story. As I mentioned to Lasha, I just wish that David would find his own man rather than continuing to lust after Will. 🙂
Josh’s characters are the main reason why I love his books. The plots are great but for me if I don’t love the characters I won’t love the book. Dead Run gave me everything I wanted. 🙂
It must be nice to be able to lock your office door and sink into a story. 😎
“It must be nice to be able to lock your office door and sink into a story.”
It was great.I planned that today specifically for this book and lo and behold nothing happened to throw off the plan (although something tried)! 😀
Gah, cliffhanger! I guess that answers my question, “will there be a fifth book?”
Would it help if I said that you would like this cliffhanger? 😯
Cliffhanger?, Im in either way. I like this series. JL has some good ones coming out.
The cliffhanger was great Hannah. You’ll really like it and don’t cheat and read the end first. lol
Is it the sort of cliffhanger that will piss me off that I have to wait a long time for the next one? :strike: I was all set to read this next, but hearing about the cliffhanger makes me wonder if I want to wait until the next one has a chance of coming soonish.
Though I do survive even when that happens, so maybe I’ll read it right away anyway. I just want to know what I’m getting myself into. 🙂
jeayci
Don’t be concerned about the cliffhanger. You will like it. 🙂 When you read the book please come back and tell me what you think but don’t reveal the cliffhanger and spoil it for other readers. 😮
Read it, loved it, didn’t have any issue with the cliffhanger at all. I can wait for the next book just fine. 🙂
Two new things for me after reading this book: I am starting to wonder if Will is good enough for Taylor, and I’m hoping David eventually gets his own story. I’ve always liked Taylor a lot, but by the end of this book I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him.
Oh be still my beating heart! :biglove: I knew it was coming out but didn’t realize it was now available! Hooray!
Well you have a treat in store. I love Will and Taylor and this time they are at their best in terms of internal conflicts.
I love Will & Taylor. This was a great addition to their story. I could feel poor Taylor’s pain. Loved how Will continually thought of Tay as Superman. Adored the kiss in the vault. My niggle was at the end. I thought Will was a bit manipulative, but I’m willing to forgive him.
This is definitely one of my favourite couples and I thought that all of the internal conflicts were what made this particular book special.
I did like the kiss in the vault, (I knew you would like it too because you love to live dangerously) 🙂 I just thought it was indiscreet given their concerns about being found out, because the department would not allow them to work together again ever.
Whether or not Will was being manipulative at the end I still loved it. 😎
Best one yet–LOVE this couple–this author is outstanding–the level of research (faux or real) staggers me–his work really is on par with a Clancy or Daniel Silva novel. Best m/m mystery/suspense writer out there–well done Josh!
Hi Sammy
Thanks for dropping by. As you indicated Josh is in a master class in his genre. 🙂