Murder in Pastel

By: Josh Lanyon

Narrated by: Tristan Wright

Ten years ago, Cosmo Bari vanished, taking with him his legendary masterpiece, Virgin in Pastel. Since that day, no one in the seaside art colony of Steeple Hill has heard from the eccentric painter. Surrounded by an extended family of Cosmo's colorful compatriots, mystery writer Kyle Bari believes he has come to terms with being abandoned by his famous father. Then his ex-lover, Adam MacKinnon, arrives with his new partner, the beautiful but poisonous Brett. Brett has an unerring instinct for other people's weak spots, and soon the quiet colony is seething with hostility and suspicion as Brett begins to hint that he knows what happened to the missing artist.

©2015 Josh Lanyon (P)2015 Josh Lanyon

One of the best

I love everything Mr. Lanyon writes. Have read almost all of his wonderful works. His choice of narrators has been excellent. Thank you Josh for many hours of fascinating listening. Would love to see many of your works put on film.

Wonderful

Each time I read/hear a Josh Lanyon book I am behind thrilled. He writes so well, he gives us great stories, his books are always wonderful. This book was no exception, fabulous!

JH Does It Again

She’s clearly made a deal with the devil. A murder mystery with a few tropes, but still entertaining and original. More witchcraft than her witchcraft series.

Not a bad read

I am a big fan of Josh Lanyon's and had recently finished " Kill Your Darlings" where Kyle had made an appearance as a side character. I was curious since I hadn't remembered Kyle's story and so I went hunting for his book.

So good notes, the mystery(s) is intriguing and the ending was solid. I feel as though there were enough breadcrumbs throughout the book that our ultimate reveal was plausible and satisfying.

I also enjoyed Lanyon's prose as usual and thought that the setting of Steeple Hill Ca. was unique enough to be interesting while maintaining plausible reality.

Here are my gripes. * warning, possible spoilers* I did not care for our main love interest. I thought he was rather toothless and indecisive, which is problematic considering our MC was also a bit toothless and indecisive. The supporting cast of characters were fine.

Normally theres a srand out favorite but that didnt happen in this book as most of them were incredibly self absorbed and didn't really grow on me. The one stand out side character was unfortunately our first vic, and even he was grating as a character, as I'm sure he was meant to be.

Unfortunately this left me with nothing to care about except the mystery which I managed to predict about 3/4 of the way through the book. I was still satisfied that I had guessed right, so thats something lol.

Give it a listen if your a completionist but maybe buy it with a credit.

Compelling mystery

Josh Lanyon was first suggested to me when I was browsing through the M/M romance novels on Audible looking for another guilty pleasure. Which is a shame, really; she's definitely a cut above most of the M/M fare on here. Her characters come alive in a way most others don't, and unlike them she doesn't seem to view the plot as a pesky nuisance that gets in the way of the sex scenes. I was absolutely hooked on the mystery of Murder in Pastel, and it kept me guessing through the whole book (I admit I was right about several things, but I wasn't completely sure so it still counts).

My one complaint with the writing is that characters didn't always act the way I think most people would act in certain situations. There's a scene in the movie Clue when a murder victim is discovered, and the people who discover her are so used to finding dead bodies that they all collectively shrug and continue with the movie. That happens here; characters die and other characters barely even seem to notice or remark on it. Of course, most of the characters are pretty loathsome--I was sort of disappointed that more of them didn't bite it in the end--but still. Also the main character, Kyle, makes several decisions that made me scratch my head.

Tristan Wright did an excellent job narrating. He sounds handsome and affable, and was a large reason I really liked and connected with Kyle so much. He sounds so affable, in fact, that suspenseful scenes weren't necessarily all that suspenseful, because his voice is so bright and soothing that I felt like he was saying "Don't worry, it will all turn out ok" even when Kyle was in some pretty hairy situations. That's my only, very minor complaint, though. In general he did a superb job.

Altogether I thought this book was excellent. There was romance--with the least loathsome of the secondary characters, thank God--but honestly I was far less interested in the romance than I was in the mystery itself, which was a wonderful change of pace. I bought several Josh Lanyon books after I finished with this one, she's really a gem of an author and I'm glad I discovered her through this book.