Good Boy Gone: Mountain Justice

It might be a 3.00 for others but I couldn't go there

If we're GR friends you know that I'm a murder/mystery fan and when it comes to m/m I'm an unapologetic fan of the Hazard & Somers, Jake & Adrien, Vic & Jacob type of couple/mystery. Characters that feel real and stories that verge off the beaten path even when it's unflattering or painful for the MC. This is a long winded way of saying that maybe this wasn't for me but I read it and these are my two cents. There might be some spoilers but ... I can't bring myself to care. Sorry.

Seth Keegan owns a diner (which he improbably runs by himself) in Buck Valley, a town I'm surmising is meant to be near or about Appalachia. I think he may be in his late 20's early 30's??? Steve Lark (same age as Seth) owns a hair salon located next to Steve's diner.

Seth's father is a moonshiner up in the mountains (probably what's called a Holler) and when he discovered Seth & Steve kissing (as teenagers) he broke Seth's arm, Seth ran away to town, got taken in by the man who owned the diner, and upon his death inherited said diner.

Steve (long blond shiny locks) is the well loved son of “hippies”, and the grandson of mysterious, rich, Manhattan penthouse dwellers. He came back from the Big City to open a hair salon where ALL the women go and love him.

The book opens with a seventeen year old boy, Jimmy, being found dead, and said death declared a suicide by the local good-for-nothing sherif. Steve, due to possibly having watched too many Murder, She Wrote episodes, knows it's not a suicide and convinces Seth that they should investigate, as one does. That's fine. I'm okay with a ride and things like this likely do happen. My issues were ....

For starters there's entirely too much info dump about the town, the who, the what etc for a story that's less than 70 pages long. The town seems to be bipolar in the sense that Seth has always been afraid to be too outwardly gay (though everyone knows he is) afraid of how he'll be treated and yet they all love and flock like bees to honey to perfect Steve. Maybe this is on Seth? At 9:45 a.m. on a weekday there are four people (women?) waiting to get their hair done with Steve. Really? What time do these people get up? Is this some resort town where people have leisure time and are early risers? By their proximity to secretive and secluded moonshiners I'd say not. More likely dead or dying former mining towns where people are scraping by everyday. These are all ignorable minor niggles. The resolution of the “case” and subsequent events were laughable at best.

If you're planning on reading this (and why not, it's 67 pg. & on KU) go no further.

It came as no surprise that Jimmy was in fact murdered but the identity of the murderer & his motives were IMO some cheap Silence of the Lambs rip off. A guy who Steve had hooked up with on an app was stalking him, he turned out to be a serial killer who takes shoes as trophies, somehow interacted with Jimmy on said app and killed him (but didn't take the shoes?), kidnaps Steve, Seth (inadvertently, through some conniving from his father) goes to rescue him, gets kidnapped too, they escape and while running in the woods Seth is worried about ticks and Lyme disease!, they get to Seth's parents house, where Seth's mom takes them in, gives them first aid, as they'd been tortured for DAYS!!! by the kidnapper, lends them a car, and proceeds to kill the serial killer herself. It also turns out that despite years of abuse for being gay or just existing Seth's Pa isn't all bad. He set Seth on the path of a serial killer so that Seth could rescue Steve but really because he didn't want the possible attention from the authorities once the killer got too prolific as the killer's lair was in their neighborhood on the mountain. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous but the salt on the wound, for me, was this acceptance of Ma & Pa Keegan like all of their brutality, how they purposely kept Steve's brother Casey as an illiterate brute so that he could do the grunt work for Pa's moonshine business, Pa beating both brothers senseless whenever the mood struck was just water under the bridge. Something never acknowledged as wrong. Ma allegedly just stood by helpless, which is belied by how she economically & quickly dealt with the serial killer. In the end Seth is thrilled when they show up in town, for the first time ever, clean & dressed, to patronize his diner. He calls it acceptance. I'd say it's closer to Stockholm syndrome.

HOUSEKEEPING: Not that I care but there isn't any sex or anything close (maybe a kiss?) on page. Apparently the author publishes their sexy times separately.

As usual YMMV