reviews_and_ramblings | Miles to Go by Connie Bailey

Rick is a good cop but he made a big mistake: he came out of the closet. In the book is not explained why and when he made the decision, we only had some hints on a previous marriage which was not so perfect. Anyway now Rick is the "gay" cop and he is roaming the street with another misfit cop, a spanish woman; and so Rick decides to volunteer to go undercover when an English drug lords decides to "acquire" the Los Angeles district. Rick is the perfect man since Gareth, the vicious criminal, has a penchant for gay handsome man. Rick's idea is to enter Gareth's bed to find out ALL his secrets and then drags him to justice. Problem is that Gareth didn't come alone from England: along with him there are three bodyguard, one best friend and... Billy Red. Billy is a pretty little thing whom mission is to grace Gareth home and pool and to satisfy every whims of the man; but Billy seems not to be a victim, he has a strange power on Gareth and he seems to have a plan on his own. Rick can't help to fall for the imp.

Meanwhile Rick's partner, Graciela, finds out that also an English cop is undercover among Gareth's crew... All right, first of all, don't think to have understand all the story from my resume: while reading I have three thesis, one very original (according to me), one obvious and one that would remind me too much another book I read recently... no one of my thesis was the right one.

Rick is a good man, but maybe he is not a so good cop (if good is the classical cop from the movie, the one who kills all the bad men alone); he made some big mistakes, but all in all he is a cop by the book: till the end he behaves as a team worker, he has not the core to be a lonesome hero. I don't want to say that he is not hero, only that he is an average "hero"; truth be told, all the climax event on the story are of average danger and the violence is always as in undertone. The only one who really seems to feel pain and joy and anger is Billy; all right, he is also a good player, he knows how to use that deer eyes he has to manipulate the men around him, but all in all he is the one who has the worst experience out of the story: Billy is Gareth's boy toy and for all the story he is used and mistreated. It's strange there are more than one sex scene in the story, but unfortunately they aren't "happy" sex scene; only in the end we read something happy. So it's only natural that I feel for Billy more than all the other, he is probably the truer character in the story; he manages to be strong and detached in the worst moment while at the same time maintain his impish image and the joy of life of a still young boy.

All in all the story is good, even if sometime I felt as the author let it go the tension: I never really felt as if my heroes were in real trouble, sometime I almost felt as if all was a big role game; as I said, the real bad moment were most targeted toward one person and in a one to one situation. But since I'm not for too much violence, I really didn't miss them, and on the contrary, I was glad to haven't to worry for all the novel.

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Amazon Kindle: Miles to Go

Amazon: Miles to Go

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