Review: Damn you, Josh Lanyon.  "Blood Red Butterfly" is an ephemeral jewel.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 24, 2013
Just as Detective Ryo Miller unfairly pigeonholes Kai Tashiro, because he doesn't look Japanese, I probably carry unjust resentment against the very talented Lanyon for what I believe is his closeted pseudonym. But my own emotional grudge can't get in the way of my admiration for the way this man writes, even if the world doesn't know who he is."Blood Red Butterfly" is a little slip of a thing - a novella packed with all of that elegant writing and carefully-sharpened emotional knife-blades with which Lanyon is so skilled. It offers a classic cop-and-witness romance filtered through the lens of the Japanese graphic novel.  For me, at least, it worked, although this new filter didn't really make the story feel that different from other works.Some folks apparently don't like the manga intermix - but I don't know enough about contemporary manga culture to be that distracted by it. I know what manga are - and yaoi. (In fact I know that imported manga influenced American designers in the 1870s, and copies of these early manga exist in the Metropolitan Museum library in NYC - bet most folks didn't know that!) And I could certainly see the visuals given by Lanyon, most vividly in Kai Tashiro's exotic beauty, and how they evoked the aesthetic of the modern Japanese graphic novel.But Lanyon's real gift is the economy with which he manages to convey emotions, character, place, context. Ryo's rapid infatuation with Kai; his inability to deal with the ambiguous personality of Mickey Torres; his own ambivalent pride in his half-Japanese heritage - all of these make for a vivid and compelling story.I do hope Lanyon works these characters into another book. They offer insight into an aspect of American life that is too rare in this genre.  Neil Plakcy has made a huge success of the Hawai'ian mix-ed race cop - Josh should be able to create something substantial and lasting with his Los Angeles denizens.