On holiday at the moment and loving being lazy bint and doing much reading. The other night I finished Josh Lanyon’s Snowball in Hell at some god-awful hour. I was so engrossed I did not even realise the time and had to make sure I was very quiet and did not wake the other bed occupant.

I really liked this book, a lot. Mind you, thus far I have thoroughly enjoyed all of Josh Lanyon’s work and have given my credit card a work out in the last wee while!



Nathan is kinda lonely and all in his head and just seems to want to make a connection even if it is fleeting and possibly dangerous. Being a homosexual man at this time would have been incredibly difficult. As a result he feels terribly conflicted and lonely. He comes across almost empty at times, shut off but with this underlying desperation.

Matt is also alone, has lost his wife and has served in the war. He seems more sure of himself but is aware of his status as a cop. Homosexuality was illegal, and because of his job you cannot help but feel empathy for the internal struggle that this causes. Matt feels what seems like an instant connection for Nathan. He has had a wife who loved him and who he loved in return, but had he lived in a more contemporary setting you wonder if he would ever have married. 

How the time is written is also wonderful and made me think of an old film noir. Chinatown?? or The Maltese Falcon which I read with my Dad when I was younger. The mystery was good but my focus was very much on the relationships of the people.

Gorgeous read, one for a quiet late night with rain on the roof.
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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 idea. 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.