Judith’s review of Snowball in Hell by Josh Lanyon.

It’s 1943 and the world is at war. Journalist Nathan Doyle has just returned home from North Africa–still recovering from wounds received in the Western Desert Campaign–when he’s asked to cover the murder of a society blackmailer.

Lt. Matthew Spain of the LAPD homicide squad hates the holidays since the death of his beloved wife a few months earlier, and this year isn’t looking much cheerier what with the threat of attack by the Japanese and a high-profile homicide investigation. Matt likes Nathan; maybe too much. If only he didn’t suspect that Nathan had every reason to commit murder.

This is a really wonderful murder mystery/romance novel set in the time frame of WWII and immediately gave me much the same feel as the Erle Stanley Gardner/Mike Hammer mystery series set in a similar time frame. Lt. Spain is himself a war veteran of the Marine invasion of Guadalcanal and has resumed his career as a LAPD police officer in homicide. He and his partner are called in to handle the investigation of a body found in the Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles just a few days before Christmas. Even in So. California it is cold and gray and rainy and for people like Lt. Spain who has little to celebrate this Christmas having only recently buried his wife, it is a cold, gray, spiritless season. Nathan Doyle has also recently returned from the war in North Africa and is still recovering from wounds that almost claimed his life. He, too, shows up when the body is found and it is Doyle who first recognizes the victim as brother of one of his long-time friends and former school classmates. Lt. Spain and Doyle also seem to recognize an attraction for each other but it is one that is kept under wraps–it is not a time or a social environment when being homosexual is healthy for one career-wise or actually in any other aspect of ordinary living.

Matthew Spain has indeed grieved over the death of his wife, a woman who was his high school sweetheart and a person he deeply loved. But has long been aware of his attraction for men and it is one that he has carefully kept hidden for years, acting on it only in very limited ways while overseas. Doyle knows that his orientation is toward men but has used the tension and danger of being a war correspondent to help divert his inner struggles and sexual energy. Now he is home and he continues to wonder if he can continue to live with this burden, one that puts his life and his career in danger as well /as endangering any other person with whom he seeks to have a relationship. He and Matthew do indeed find each other and bring some deep and satisfying joy into each other’s lives for the span of a few days. The reader is kept wondering of these two fine men can manage to endure and meet this challenge in a society that thinks of homosexuals as psycho-perverts or mentally ill.

The other main strand of this novel is the murder mystery and Lt. Spain is carrying on his investigation while Doyle is trying to follow up on his own hunches and leads. That they manage to solve the mystery is another way in which these two men merge their efforts and find that they have that investigative curiosity in common.

This novel is about the curious mix of fast and loose living in the United States during the war coupled with social mores that are exceedingly suppressive and oppressive. It is the time of food rationing and gas rationing and being unable to buy tires for cars (all the rubber is going toward the war effort.) It is the glory days for some of the establishments that still stand in Los Angeles even though now some of them are weary and worn around the edges. I have been to the Biltmore Hotel for several conferences and celebrations even now it has the grace of a stately old dowager. It must have been glorious in 1943. It is also a time when even the adversarial relationship between law enforcement and the press–never really a comfortable relationship, didn’t seem quite so ascerbic as it is now. There were some boundaries that seem to have evaporated in the decades since. This story also embraces the sadness that is a permanent component in the minds and hearts of those who are not considered acceptable by society, and it also celebrates the warmth and deep inner completion that comes when two people find a genuine caring and basic respect for one another–a level of comfort and belonging that simply wasn’t available to gay couples unless they were exceptionally devious and very good at covering their tracks. Even then there was always a element of danger that ate away at that comfort level all human beings seek from those who are their significant others.

As always, Josh Lanyon lays it right on the line and wraps it all up in the experiences and adventures of a 1940’s murder mystery. it is a delightful read and one that stretches the emotions, feeds the mind, stimulates the imagination, and educates the heart.

It is just one darn fine read and I give it a 4.75 out of 5.

This book is available from Carina Press. You can buy it here or here in e-format.