Orientation by Gregory Ashe

Narrated by Charlie David

Orientation is the first book in Gregory Ashe’s latest series of romantic suspense novels, and it features two long-standing friends who run a detective agency in St. Louis. Mr. Ashe has rapidly become one of my favourite authors; he writes incredibly well-constructed, twisty mysteries and combines them with brilliantly written, superbly developed and complex relationships between his principal characters that just ooze sexual tension and make you want to bang their heads together at the same time as you’re rooting for them to see what’s in front of their noses and just kiss already!

North McKinney and Kingsley Shaw Wilder Aldrich met in their freshman year of college and have been pretty much inseparable ever since. They’re like chalk and cheese – North comes from a blue-collar family of construction workers, while Shaw was born into wealth; North comes across as a hardened cynic whereas Shaw is all wide-eyed innocence… yet something about them just clicked eight years earlier and they’ve been best friends ever since. North was also there for Shaw during the worst time of Shaw’s life; at the end of freshman year, Shaw and his boyfriend Carl were attacked by the West End Slasher, a crazed serial killer who was murdering young gay men across the city. Carl was killed and Shaw was critically injured, but although Shaw recovered physically, the mental scars took much longer to heal, and if it hadn’t been for North’s refusal to let his friend sink into depression and despair, he might not have made it.

Almost four years earlier, North and Shaw opened Borealis Investigations with the intention of specifically (but not exclusively) helping members of the LGBT community, and things were going fairly well until their last case. North was forced to shoot a suspect in order to save Shaw’s life, his actions leading not only to the suspension of his PI license pending investigation, but also to a very costly private lawsuit. Business has been thin on the ground since, which is one of the reasons Shaw is keen to take on the case brought to them by Matthew Fennmore, an engagingly shy young man who turns up at their offices out of the blue and tells them he’s being blackmailed by a man he had a one night stand with earlier that week. The other reason Shaw is keen is one North can see right away and doesn’t like at all; Matthew Fennmore is gorgeous and vulnerable in just the right way to appeal to Shaw’s propensity to pick up “strays”- and when Fennmore goes on to explain that he can’t go to the police because his ultra-conservative family can’t find out he’s gay, North knows he’s lost the battle. Shaw is obviously smitten as well as outraged on Matty’s behalf; plus, they need the work and Matty is just the sort of person they set up the agency to help. North can’t deny that Shaw is right about one thing – they do need the work. But he still doesn’t like it.

North and Shaw begin their investigation and very quickly realise that there’s more going on than a simple case of blackmail, and that whoever is blackmailing Matty also has a stash of incriminating video he or she is using to control and manipulate important people across the city. But when their main suspect is murdered and Matty is attacked, it’s clear that North and Shaw are getting too close to the truth, and that the perpetrator will stop at nothing in order to protect their investment.

Despite their very different background and personalities, North and Shaw work together like a well-oiled machine. They snark and tease and finish each other’s sentences, trading quips at dizzying speed, and there’s a genuine undercurrent of affection and trust between them that comes with eight years of friendship and knowing each other better than anyone else in the world.

But. As the story progresses, both men come to realise that perhaps they don’t know each other quite as well as they’d thought. North has always known that Shaw still carries unseen scars – as well as visible ones – from the attack, but had believed he was mostly over it, until he’s brought to see that actually, he isn’t and the effects have been deeper and longer-lasting than North had thought. Or, perhaps, wanted to think. And Shaw discovers a disturbing secret about North, too, something he can’t believe his friend has been hiding from him for years. With North and Shaw suddenly realising that there are things the other hasn’t trusted them with, with the case – and maybe Matty – starting to drive a wedge between them, and a piece of important and potentially damning information blowing up in their faces with devastating consequences for their friendship – are they going to be able to solve the case and come away with their lives? And even if they can, will things between them ever be the same?

The fact that there are two more books in the series will no doubt provide an answer to that, but it’s the way that Mr. Ashe gets them there that is the real treat. Anyone who has read or listened to the author’s Hazard and Somerset series will know that he writes sexual tension like there’s no tomorrow; he’s the king of the slow-burn and the fucked-up, dysfunctional relationship characterised by deep, complicated and conflicting emotions, and that sort of thing is like catnip to yours truly. North and Shaw are obviously and completely in love, have been in deep denial about it for years and have no idea how the other feels. North is married – not happily as it turns out – and thinks Shaw sees him as an obnoxious sibling while Shaw thinks his ‘crush’ on North is safe because he’s off limits and nothing can ever happen between them. Gah!

Charlie David is an experienced narrator and although I’ve listened to him once or twice before, it was a while ago, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect here. But right from the start, he captured North and Shaw’s voices perfectly, injecting just the right amount of snark, the right amount of affectionate exasperation for North and the right amount of “who, me?” smart-arsed innocence for Shaw – and after that I was pretty convinced he’d more than do the story justice. And he did. His pacing and character differentiation are good; there are a fairly large number of secondary characters, but with one or two small exceptions, I never had any trouble telling the difference between them. The other thing I really liked about the performance as a whole is that Mr. David is a narrator who acts rather than just reading the words. If a character cries, or sighs or whimpers, then that’s what he does; if the author writes “… he said with a laugh”, then that’s exactly what I heard, not a silly “ha, ha, ha” at the end of the line; rather it’s a smile in the voice or a laugh throughout the speech, and while I know not everyone likes that style of narration, it’s my preference (provided it’s not over the top) and I’m always delighted when I find a narrator who really gets into the spirit of the thing while remaining faithful to the text.

The blackmailer plot is wrapped up by the end of the book, but there are some very intriguing plot-threads left over for future stories. Gregory Ashe continues to impress with the quality of his writing, his clever plots, his insight into character and motivation, and his ability to create memorable characters who are easy to root for. Charlie David’s excellent performance gets the Borealis Investigations series off to a terrific start in audio and I’m eager for more.

Caz

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