Review: Am I just a Fox sycophant? Half Moon Chambers rocks.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 23, 2012
Not Fox News, but Harper Fox, the queen of m/m romance.  I am biased, but so what?  The real point about Harper Fox's books is that they take the genre, which I love and know really well, and hone it to a keen edge, visually and emotionally.  No author - not even the revered Josh Lanyon - creates a sense of place as vivid and as beautifully drawn as Ms. Fox.  One reads Fox's novels for the characters, for the story, and only secondarily for the erotic content.  Not that she doesn't do that extraordinarily well.  Sex without emotional heft is just, well, porn. Even within the self-imposed parameters of m/m fiction, there is a lot of space for art, and Fox brings all her skill to give us a book that is beautiful as well as engaging.Harry Callahan, the young Newcastle-born cop, is a product of the mean streets of this northern English city.  He is cynical and unforgiving of the crackheads who hamper the reviving fortunes of his beloved home town.  But he wants the big show - the London Met(ropolitan Police) with his mate / squeeze Jack.  An unexpected police action changes all of Harry's plans, and leaves him lost and staggering.Enter Rowan Clyde, a dodgy witness who had to have seen a particularly vicious crime, but refuses to help the cops out of fear for his own life (not without reason).  The stumbling pas-de-deux that he and Harry perform will change the scope of the police department's criminal target; and break down the storm-damaged emotional wall that Harry has built up since his fall from grace within the department.Not everyone likes Harper Fox's characters - but her ability to reclaim lost, unlikable souls is one of the chief delights of her writing.  However you feel about them at first, you know she'll make you love them in the end. And isn't that, after all, the point?