Narrated by Charlie David
Triangulation is book two in Gregory Ashe’s Borealis Investigations series featuring St. Louis based PIs North McKinney and Shaw Aldrich, two guys who have known each other since college and have secretly pined for each other for just as long. The story picks up a couple of months after the events of book one, Orientation, and I’d advise anyone thinking of picking up Triangulation go to back and listen to that first, as it provides context for the relationship between the two leads and kicks off the series’ overarching plotline concerning Shaw’s search for the serial killer dubbed the West End Slasher, who murdered his boyfriend and left him critically injured some eight years before.
(Note: There are spoilers for Orientation in this review.)
Triangulation opens with Pari – North and Shaw’s office assistant (who seems to spend all her time haranguing them and never appears to do a stroke of work) – attempting to persuade them to look into the disappearance of Shep Collins, an LGBTQ youth worker and prominent figure in the St. Louis gay community. Pari’s girlfriend Chuck works with Collins at the local halfway house, and is concerned because he hasn’t been seen for a few days. North isn’t keen on the idea, especially after he learns that Collins used to administer conversion therapy to gay teenaged boys – but Chuck is really worried, and insists that Collins is a changed man; he’s out and married, the kids he works with love him and he sees his work with them as a way of atoning for what he did in the past. North still doesn’t want to take the case, but Shaw does, and after one of those typically North and Shaw circuitous not-conversations, they tell Chuck and Pari they’ll take the case.
Right from the start, the things they’re told about Collins past and present, and about his last known movements don’t add up. His purportedly happy marriage was on the rocks, a large sum of money has gone missing from Iris House, yet he never seemed to have any cash… everybody, even Chuck, who was worried enough about him to hire North and Shaw in the first place, has a different story to tell, and the truth is frustratingly obscure. Things change drastically a day or so later however, when Collins’ body is found in the trunk of Chuck’s car and she is arrested for murder. North and Shaw are determined to find the real killer, but their investigation sees them repeatedly clashing with detectives from St. Louis’ LGBT task force – who seem far more interested in North and Shaw than they do in catching the person responsible for Collins’ murder.
The mystery is clever, well-plotted and full of dangerous twists and turns, and running alongside is the plotline concerning Shaw’s search for the Slasher. He has never been convinced that the right man was convicted, and since the discovery, at the end of Orientation, of a video taken the night of the attack which shows the killer getting into a car (with a visible license plate) he has been doing some digging on his own. Unbeknownst to North, he has applied for permission to visit the convicted man in prison – but when the appointed day arrives, Shaw is too late. He died the previous night, and nobody is saying how.
And at the heart of it all is the relationship between the two leads. Anyone familiar with Gregory Ashe’s work will already know how very good he is at weaving together multiple storylines while also allowing the characters to shine and exploring the complexities of a partnership, whether professional or personal – and in this, as in his wonderful Hazard and Somerset series, the relationship between North and Shaw is a mixture of both. The events of the previous book – when Shaw became romantically involved with a client who betrayed and tried to kill him – almost destroyed his and North’s friendship, and although things may be back to normal on the surface, the delicate balance of deflection and denial they’ve maintained for the past eight years has been upset and things between them can never be the same. These two know each other inside out and ‘get’ each other in ways nobody else does. They finish each other’s sentences, and when they really get going on one of their trademark bantering sessions, it’s like they’re the only two people in the room and you can just feel the confusion radiating off anyone looking on. But even so, even with all that knowledge, and years of friendship there are things they’ve kept from one another and one thing they’re never honest about. Their feelings for each other.
I am a complete sucker for Gregory Ashe’s brand of angsty, slow-burn romance and complex, likeable characters with smart mouths, quick minds and relationships that ooze sexual chemistry like it’s going out of fashion. His insight into what makes his characters tick is always impressive, and he’s not afraid to take them to some dark places. Given Shaw’s experiences, it’s not surprising he has serious trust and intimacy issues, but he’s struggling to deal with them while trying to prevent North from seeing just how bad things are; and North has kept secret the fact that his husband is abusive for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the dread that Shaw will see him as weak and someone to be pitied. It’s deep and twisted and fucked up – and it’s my book catnip.
I said in my review of Orientation that Charlie David’s interpretations of North and Shaw were perfect, and that still holds true; he adopts a gravelly, slightly world-weary tone for North, and a higher, brighter one for Shaw that thoroughly captures his air of wide-eyed innocence. His pacing is generally good (perhaps sometimes it’s a little slow, but not dreadfully so) and his timing in North and Shaw’s back-and-forth exchanges and one-liners is spot on. He has a rich, deep voice which is very easy on the ear, and is a terrific vocal actor; the emotional content of Mr. Ashe’s books is complex and demanding, and Mr. David really delivers, his ability to convey moments of raw emotion giving the author’s words even more impact than they already had. One instance of this that’s stuck with me is the ‘bathtub’ scene in the second half of the book, which is so full of longing, despair, fear and deep, deep love and affection that listening to it was like a real punch to the gut. (In a good way!) I always find it easier to overlook a few minor faults in a performance if the narrator is able to really pull me into the story and make me feel all the emotions the characters are feeling, and Mr. David does that extremely well. I did have the odd issue with the character differentiation; there are quite a few secondary characters in the story, and while most are easy enough to identify, I found it difficult to tell the difference between Pari and Chuck when they appeared together, and the handful of female characters are close in register to the voice he uses for Shaw and can sound a bit similar.
Overall, however, it’s a terrific performance that does the book more than justice. Triangulation is clever and gritty and dark and romantic and funny all at the same time; almost thirteen hours of the listen flew by and even though I’ve read book three (Declination) already, I can’t wait for it to arrive in audio.
(Note: Triangulation has a cliffhanger ending.)
Caz
Buy Triangulation by Gregory Ashe on Amazon
1 thought on “Triangulation by Gregory Ashe”
Comments are closed.