Status
Available
Call number
Series
Publication
Samhain Publishing (2011), 272 pages
Description
Fiction. Romance. Suspense. HTML: Giving screwball mystery a whole deadly new meaning. Holmes & Moriarity, Book 2 A murderous fall down icy stairs is nearly the death of Anna Hitchcock, the much-beloved "American Agatha Christie" and Christopher Holmes's former mentor. Anna's plea for him to host her annual winter writing retreat touches all Kit's sore spots�??traveling, teaching writing classes, and separation from his new lover, J.X. Moriarity. For J.X., Kit's cancellation of yet another romantic weekend is the death knell of a relationship that has been limping along for months. But that's just as well, right? Kit isn't ready for anything serious and besides, Kit owes Anna far too much to refuse. Faster than you can say "Miss Marple wears boxer shorts", Kit is snooping around Anna's elegant, snowbound mansion in the Berkshires for clues as to who's trying to kill her. A tough task with six amateur sleuths underfoot. Six budding writers with a tangled web of dark undercurrents running among them. Slowly, Kit gets the uneasy feeling that the secret may lie between the pages of someone's fictional past. Unfortunately, a clever killer is one step ahead. And it may be too late for J.X. to ride to the rescue. Warning: Contains one irascible, forty-year-old mystery writer who desperately needs to get laid, one exasperated thirty-something ex-cop only too happy to oblige, an isolated country manor that needs the thermostat cranked up, various assorted aspiring and perspiring authors, and a merciless killer who may have read one too many mystery novels.… (more)
Media reviews
User reviews
LibraryThing member kateoncouch
Mystery wise Lanyon manages to strike that delicate balance between keeping the reader guessing until the reveal and making that reveal seem obvious and inevitable once it is in fact, revealed.Romance wise, goodness gracious Kit and J.X. manage to be absolutely adorable without being cloying and
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sickening.Review wise I really ought to stop treating Layton's romance and mystery plots separately because certainly by this point he manages to intertwine them quite deftly. Show Less
LibraryThing member BrianEWilliams
A wonderful mystery novel. Much better than the first Holmes & Moriarity. Looking forward to the next one.
LibraryThing member amf0001
I love Josh Lanyon, and most of his books just sing to me, but this one has a few especially lyric scenes - and when you find them, you'll know what I mean. This is a cozy mystery format, and I hope he writes many, many more. We meet Christopher (never Chris) Holmes again, and he is the sort of man
As you can see from this review, I'm far more interested in their relationship dynamics than in the mystery, which I enjoyed thoroughly, despite finding it predictable (I knew who the villain was from early on). Lanyon writes beautifully, creates great characters and I'm happy to spend time with these two and hope for many more books to come.
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who writes about a 70 year old sleuth and her mystery solving cat. I just enjoy his foibles, his trauma at turning 40 ('you would have thought that the previous 39 years were sufficient warning") and I love J X Moriarity. My only criticism is that JX is a little too perfect, endlessly forgiving and accommodating Kit, as he calls him.As you can see from this review, I'm far more interested in their relationship dynamics than in the mystery, which I enjoyed thoroughly, despite finding it predictable (I knew who the villain was from early on). Lanyon writes beautifully, creates great characters and I'm happy to spend time with these two and hope for many more books to come.
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LibraryThing member keyboardcouch
Mystery wise Lanyon manages to strike that delicate balance between keeping the reader guessing until the reveal and making that reveal seem obvious and inevitable once it is in fact, revealed.
Romance wise, goodness gracious Kit and J.X. manage to be absolutely adorable without being cloying and
Review wise I really ought to stop treating Layton's romance and mystery plots separately because certainly by this point he manages to intertwine them quite deftly.
Romance wise, goodness gracious Kit and J.X. manage to be absolutely adorable without being cloying and
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sickening.Review wise I really ought to stop treating Layton's romance and mystery plots separately because certainly by this point he manages to intertwine them quite deftly.
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LibraryThing member maybedog
Sometimes I really hate computers. I just lost a 15 paragraph review by hitting the wrong two buttons in a row.
So this will be shorter:
This sounds like the previous book but it's not the same at all and it's even better. There's more action and danger. This is not a traditional cozy mystery like
As is typical of Lanyon, this is a smart book. There are a lot of literary references, and a couple I must admit I didn’t know. The humor tends to be dry and often refers to literature. But sometimes it’s just funny. I laughed out loud so many times I lost count. Here are some parts that got the dogs looking at me funny. All are from pages 18- 20. If you don’t find this funny, you probably won’t find the book that funny.
She put it all together. The case of violent food poisoning that affected her but no one else in the house, the stone urn that fell off a balcony and narrowly missed crushing her, the brakes failing in her car. I heard her out in silence. Well, for me it was silence. Close to silence. I hardly interrupted at all. For me.
“Christopher, would you kindly shut up?” Anna requested at last. “This is my story. I’m trying to tell it my own way. I do know about maintaining proper levels of brake fluid. I have an excellent mechanic.”
[On being told the Anna won’t go to the police basically because the embarrassment would be intolerable.]
Not as intolerable as being dead, in my opinion, but I’m very fond of me. I’d miss me a lot.
“You’re very observant, Christopher.”
“I never noticed.”
The bed itself looked like it had been modified from a sacrificial altar on some obscure Grecian isle . . .
[description of a godawful bed that is ginormous and gaudy]
. . . There was companion furniture, of course, but it seemed to exist merely to keep the bed from brooding over its change in fortune. Stephen King could have written a book about that bed.
Moriarity is such a great lover for Holmes. He isn't co-dependent, he maintains his boundaries, but he's very sweet and very loving and he is there for Holmes when Holmes needs him. He finally calls Holmes on some of his bullshit, which is about time. He is seriously Mr. Perfect. Holmes is neurotic as ever but he's growing and we learn more about why he's the way he is and see him figuring out what's wrong with himself.
The story isn't over and the next one is supposed to be published this year sometime. I can't wait.
So this will be shorter:
This sounds like the previous book but it's not the same at all and it's even better. There's more action and danger. This is not a traditional cozy mystery like
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the last one. They are not isolated, Holmes has been asked there, there are only a handful of people at the event and the shindig is not that important. Although I figured it out really early on, I still really enjoyed the book. There is real danger, for both of them, and there's a lot of that sweet, worrying about each other's safety that I so adore.As is typical of Lanyon, this is a smart book. There are a lot of literary references, and a couple I must admit I didn’t know. The humor tends to be dry and often refers to literature. But sometimes it’s just funny. I laughed out loud so many times I lost count. Here are some parts that got the dogs looking at me funny. All are from pages 18- 20. If you don’t find this funny, you probably won’t find the book that funny.
She put it all together. The case of violent food poisoning that affected her but no one else in the house, the stone urn that fell off a balcony and narrowly missed crushing her, the brakes failing in her car. I heard her out in silence. Well, for me it was silence. Close to silence. I hardly interrupted at all. For me.
“Christopher, would you kindly shut up?” Anna requested at last. “This is my story. I’m trying to tell it my own way. I do know about maintaining proper levels of brake fluid. I have an excellent mechanic.”
[On being told the Anna won’t go to the police basically because the embarrassment would be intolerable.]
Not as intolerable as being dead, in my opinion, but I’m very fond of me. I’d miss me a lot.
“You’re very observant, Christopher.”
“I never noticed.”
The bed itself looked like it had been modified from a sacrificial altar on some obscure Grecian isle . . .
[description of a godawful bed that is ginormous and gaudy]
. . . There was companion furniture, of course, but it seemed to exist merely to keep the bed from brooding over its change in fortune. Stephen King could have written a book about that bed.
Moriarity is such a great lover for Holmes. He isn't co-dependent, he maintains his boundaries, but he's very sweet and very loving and he is there for Holmes when Holmes needs him. He finally calls Holmes on some of his bullshit, which is about time. He is seriously Mr. Perfect. Holmes is neurotic as ever but he's growing and we learn more about why he's the way he is and see him figuring out what's wrong with himself.
The story isn't over and the next one is supposed to be published this year sometime. I can't wait.
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LibraryThing member JDRuskin1184
I liked the first book in the series even though I kind of wanted to strangle Kit. The second book was great. I had a better understanding of the Kit/Jax relationship and I could see Kit making progress on being less strangleworthy.
LibraryThing member TW_Spencer
Though well written, I had a had time liking any of the characters. I finished it, but it was difficult. In addition, I figured out the who the villian was long before the protagonist.
LibraryThing member TW_Spencer
Though well written, I had a had time liking any of the characters. I finished it, but it was difficult. In addition, I figured out the who the villian was long before the protagonist.
LibraryThing member TW_Spencer
Though well written, I had a had time liking any of the characters. I finished it, but it was difficult. In addition, I figured out the who the villian was long before the protagonist.
LibraryThing member Stewartry
Josh Lanyon was a sort of accidental discovery, starting with an almost guilty purchase from Samhain Publishing - I just won't tell anyone about the smut I read… But this isn't smut. This is good stuff, a well-done cozy mystery (!) (in that the primary investigator is a mystery writer, these are
All She Wrote is number two in the "Holmes and Moriarity" series – and that extra "I" in Moriarity (and the way it's handled) makes me happy, makes it less an eye-catching gimmick and more a sort of joke shared with the main characters. Christopher (Kit) Holmes is crotchety, set in his ways, fragile of confidence hiding behind a veneer of apparent arrogance, and loath to trust in good fortune since it usually comes with a sting in its tail, and I love to share his point of view. And J.X. Moriarity, the long-suffering and gorgeous… Yeah.
I enjoyed the writing, so very much. A snarky, funny first-person POV, self-deprecating – the latter masking deep, deep, bleak insecurity – and with just a hint of Lord Peteresque blather. ("He who argues with a fool is a bigger fool. Or drunk. And I was neither. I wasn't drunk, anyway. Worse luck.") It's incisive and clear-sighted, and Lanyon via Kit delivers solid observation with a flair of humor ("This went beyond talent and hard work, this was gifted. This was the kind of acuity you were either born with or you weren't. Like having perfect pitch or Brad Pitt's cheekbones.")
And for fun here's a quote I would l like on my gravestone, if I have one: "Did I mention I hate driving in snow? It should go without saying."
More wonderful quotes:
I threw a quick look back at J.X. His weary, drawn face reminded me of a young, handsome Don Quixote. I wouldn't have been surprised to spot pieces of broken windmill scattered in the sheets around him.
He scooped up Victoria practically before she hit the ground, well within the five-second rule. If she'd been a potato chip, he could have still eaten her. Not something I particularly wanted to contemplate.
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cozies) with a couple of steamy (but not appallingly explicitly steamy) scenes worked in.All She Wrote is number two in the "Holmes and Moriarity" series – and that extra "I" in Moriarity (and the way it's handled) makes me happy, makes it less an eye-catching gimmick and more a sort of joke shared with the main characters. Christopher (Kit) Holmes is crotchety, set in his ways, fragile of confidence hiding behind a veneer of apparent arrogance, and loath to trust in good fortune since it usually comes with a sting in its tail, and I love to share his point of view. And J.X. Moriarity, the long-suffering and gorgeous… Yeah.
I enjoyed the writing, so very much. A snarky, funny first-person POV, self-deprecating – the latter masking deep, deep, bleak insecurity – and with just a hint of Lord Peteresque blather. ("He who argues with a fool is a bigger fool. Or drunk. And I was neither. I wasn't drunk, anyway. Worse luck.") It's incisive and clear-sighted, and Lanyon via Kit delivers solid observation with a flair of humor ("This went beyond talent and hard work, this was gifted. This was the kind of acuity you were either born with or you weren't. Like having perfect pitch or Brad Pitt's cheekbones.")
And for fun here's a quote I would l like on my gravestone, if I have one: "Did I mention I hate driving in snow? It should go without saying."
More wonderful quotes:
I threw a quick look back at J.X. His weary, drawn face reminded me of a young, handsome Don Quixote. I wouldn't have been surprised to spot pieces of broken windmill scattered in the sheets around him.
He scooped up Victoria practically before she hit the ground, well within the five-second rule. If she'd been a potato chip, he could have still eaten her. Not something I particularly wanted to contemplate.
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LibraryThing member tldegray
I might have waited a whole hour after finishing Holmes & Moriarity Book 1 before I set my Kindle to shop and downloaded book 2. And that was probably only because I took a break from reading to eat dinner.
Lanyon's Holmes & Moriarity books are filling a void I hadn't realized was missing. I grew up
With Miss Butterwith safely ensconced at a new publishing house and Christopher freed from having to develop a new series, he's a little more relaxed. Well, relaxed about his work, certainly not about his relationship with J.X. When his old mentor asks him to step in and run a writer's workshop for her he jumps at the chance and easily cancels plans with J.X. We all know how much Christopher hates writer's workshops and so does J.X. so he sees the writing on the wall when Kit bails on him yet again.
Christopher tells himself he did it for good reasons. His mentor, Anna--the American Agatha Christie--thinks someone is trying to kill her and after Christopher saved the day at his last writer's retreat she thinks he's the one to help her find out who done it. J.X. isn't buying it and neither is Christopher, not really. When Christopher gets hurt in the line of duty it's J.X. he wants and J.X. who comes.
The mystery, as with the first book, kept me guessing, and the resolution was highly satisfactory. The love story was especially interesting to me as J.X. and Kit tried to navigate their various power imbalances without hurting each other. The sex scenes were more explicit than in the first book, but still highly emotionally charged.
If you like characters with depth and shades of grey, you'll enjoy this mystery.
Lanyon's Holmes & Moriarity books are filling a void I hadn't realized was missing. I grew up
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reading mysteries--some very much like Christopher's Miss Butterwith series--and have been looking for something that captures my imagination the way they did. What can I say, I like a nice, academic, gentle mystery. And I especially like it when the good guys can't always save the day and when the bad guys aren't all bad.With Miss Butterwith safely ensconced at a new publishing house and Christopher freed from having to develop a new series, he's a little more relaxed. Well, relaxed about his work, certainly not about his relationship with J.X. When his old mentor asks him to step in and run a writer's workshop for her he jumps at the chance and easily cancels plans with J.X. We all know how much Christopher hates writer's workshops and so does J.X. so he sees the writing on the wall when Kit bails on him yet again.
Christopher tells himself he did it for good reasons. His mentor, Anna--the American Agatha Christie--thinks someone is trying to kill her and after Christopher saved the day at his last writer's retreat she thinks he's the one to help her find out who done it. J.X. isn't buying it and neither is Christopher, not really. When Christopher gets hurt in the line of duty it's J.X. he wants and J.X. who comes.
The mystery, as with the first book, kept me guessing, and the resolution was highly satisfactory. The love story was especially interesting to me as J.X. and Kit tried to navigate their various power imbalances without hurting each other. The sex scenes were more explicit than in the first book, but still highly emotionally charged.
If you like characters with depth and shades of grey, you'll enjoy this mystery.
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LibraryThing member crtsjffrsn
Christopher "Kit" Holmes cannot turn down a request to help out his former mentor, Anna Hitchcock. And he certainly wishes he could. But she's called to ask him to step in and host a writing retreat at her home and he must heed the call. And to do so he must cancel yet another weekend with J.X.
But Kit finds his problems are worse than he imagined after he arrives at Anna's home. The fall that led to her injury and inability to host the event herself--well, it may not have been an accident. Anna suspects someone purposely injured her. And as Kit learns more about the various attendees at the writing retreat, he quickly learns that pretty much everyone around him has some level of motive for being the culprit. And Kit once again becomes an amateur sleuth, trying to find answers and unwittingly putting himself in danger. But will he be able to find out the truth before anyone else is hurt? And will he be able to make up with J.X. when all is said and done?
If you've read the first book in this series, you can expect a similar feel and approach in this second installment. Kit wanders unknowingly into a case and falls deep into his quest to solve it. Unexpected twists and turns fall onto his path along the way. And the danger becomes very real to him on more than one occasion. What's different here is that the ending doesn't wrap up quite as nicely as the first book. And probably not quite as nicely as most readers would like to see. But just as life is complex and doesn't always go the way we'd expect or like, I appreciate this approach on some level myself.
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Moriarty, his new boyfriend, putting strain on an already tenuous relationship.But Kit finds his problems are worse than he imagined after he arrives at Anna's home. The fall that led to her injury and inability to host the event herself--well, it may not have been an accident. Anna suspects someone purposely injured her. And as Kit learns more about the various attendees at the writing retreat, he quickly learns that pretty much everyone around him has some level of motive for being the culprit. And Kit once again becomes an amateur sleuth, trying to find answers and unwittingly putting himself in danger. But will he be able to find out the truth before anyone else is hurt? And will he be able to make up with J.X. when all is said and done?
If you've read the first book in this series, you can expect a similar feel and approach in this second installment. Kit wanders unknowingly into a case and falls deep into his quest to solve it. Unexpected twists and turns fall onto his path along the way. And the danger becomes very real to him on more than one occasion. What's different here is that the ending doesn't wrap up quite as nicely as the first book. And probably not quite as nicely as most readers would like to see. But just as life is complex and doesn't always go the way we'd expect or like, I appreciate this approach on some level myself.
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LibraryThing member jetangen4571
angst, closed-circle-mystery, false-conclusions, friendship, frustration, snow-season, relationship-issues, relationships, verbal-humor, m/m cozy-mystery, m/m romantic-suspense, murder, murder-investigation, invested-erotica, self-worth-issues, writers, wry-humor, editor, snarky*****
Cristopher is
Excellent plot with hazardous red herrings, massive twists, fantastic characters, and a setting to die for. Loved it!
Voice actor Kevin R. Free is perfectly attuned to the main characters and makes a fun read spectacular!
Cristopher is
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conned into helping with an annual winter writing retreat in Connecticut by one of his oldest friends/mentor because she believes that someone is trying to kill her. This comes at a time when he is buried in angst over the man he probably loves. So off he goes. He feels woefully inadequate to the tasks she has set for him, and then he is nearly killed (JX to the rescue!). The sleuthing becomes a reluctantly joint effort and the romance...Excellent plot with hazardous red herrings, massive twists, fantastic characters, and a setting to die for. Loved it!
Voice actor Kevin R. Free is perfectly attuned to the main characters and makes a fun read spectacular!
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Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2010-12-28
ISBN
160928206X / 9781609282066