I swear, this is the third book by this author where a character does something incredibly stupid, with foreshadowing, with cramming down the neck of the dumb. The author writes really well when they're not troping - especially the character-is-dumb trope - but sweet gods.

The story itself keeps me grinding away at it, but this book in particular has made me want to rip my brain out a couple times just so I won't have to remember *that* bit.

There's more than one *that* bit. ( )

The newly re-christened George is open for business. Tom and Kyrie are exploring their relationship/living arrangement, and everything's going swimmingly, right? Sure. Until winter descends, the local aquarium begins having a small problem with dead bodies in their shark tank, and a centuries old bounty hunter targets the George's new owners.

An excellent sequel to Draw One in the Dark, which you'll probably want to read first so that this installment makes more sense. ( )

Fun book. I'm very glad I waited to read it until I'd read Draw One in the Dark, though - I'd have been completely bewildered most of the time, I think. There's a lot of relationships established or thoroughly explained in Dark that shake out in some new directions in Gentleman. That said - the mystery here is pretty poor, both of them. The murder-by-shark is given away way too early, and then the characters plod along to finally reach some conclusion... Dante Dire is just weird. An ancient society of shifters, and the best enforcement of their laws they can come up with is a psychopathic killer and some random rules? Eww. And while the solution to him is slowly unfolded through multiple encounters, it seems to me that some of the key encounters are not shared - that is, one person discovers a way to deflect him and in the next encounter another person, who we are not shown being told or otherwise learning the new method, uses it. As a mystery, or a horror, it's average at best. As a relationship novel, where people learn more about themselves and each other and their world (including the aforementioned ancient society of shifters - or maybe that should be ancient societies), it's great. I enjoyed it a lot; unfortunately, as far as I can see, there isn't a sequel. ( )

Amazon preorder ( )