Review: Snowball in Hell by Josh Lanyon
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 5, 2012
This is a very good mystery. If you are good enough you will pick up al the clues scattered all arounf the book and have a change to unveil the murderer even before the last page. If not, you have read a very good story with two wonderful, but very real characters, and a sweet love story.It's the Christmas of 1943 and Nathan is a reporter who is just returned home from the European conflict where he has served as journalist along the British Army. He seems to not have been accustomed again to the civil life, and even if he is beloved by collegue and family he is a pretty solitary man. Tiny and fair, he doesn't seem strong enough, but he hides a stubborn character. He is also a very cultured man, he reads Plato and Thomas Aquinas.Mathew is an LAPD lieutenant; he has served as Marine at the beginning of the WWII at Guadalcanal, but after being wounded he has returned home only to see his beloved wife dying of cancer some months after. Now he is a man who has voted his life to work. He is a simple and good man, someone you can rely on. He is clever, maybe not taught, he reads westerns. (according to Matt, and maybe Josh Lanyon, you could tell a lot about a man by what he chose to read).When Nathan and Matt meet, they now from the first moment that they have found a soul mate. Nathan has searched for all his life to denying his homosexuality, maybe even trying to kill himself in the conflict, but not daring to committ suicide: he is catholic and even if he judges himself an abomination, he can't do something against God. Matt instead has long admited that he likes men, but he has had a good marriage, and after the death of his wife, he has not searched another mate, female or male. But Nathan, maybe after seeing so many men dying without a real reason, needs the human contact, even if the strange and detached contact he can found in a one standing encounter in the shadow of the night.But there is a murder and Nathan seems to be the last person to have seen alive the victim and he has also some secrets to hidden. Secrets that only Matt has discovered, thanks to the very attraction he has felt for this man. And so, while both Nathan then Matt, every one in his own way, try to unveil the real name of the murderer, a fragile relationship blossoms between them, a relationship that, in 1943, could destroy everything they have.As I said, the mystery is pretty good, it has reminded me one of those black and white movies, Humphrey Bogart style (even if I don't envision Nathan nor Matt with the face of Bogey...) or lately L.A. Confidential (and maybe Matt with the face of Russel Crowe and Nathan with that of Guy Pearce...), but what I was searching reading the book, and that I have found wonderfully written, is the love story between Nathan and Matt.