Police Brutality
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For the first time in a long while, Emery Hazard's life is good. His new business as a private detective is taking off. Things are good at home. He loves his boyfriend, John-Henry Somerset; he loves their daughter. He might even love the new friends they've found. There's only one problem: Somers has been talking about marriage.When a former colleague, Walter Hoffmeister, comes to Hazard and hires him to look into a series of anonymous death threats, Hazard eagerly jumps on the distraction. Hoffmeister might be a jerk, but he's a paying jerk, and Hazard isn't convinced the threats are serious.Until, that is, Hoffmeister is almost gunned down on Hazard's doorstep. As Hazard investigates more deeply, he learns that more than one person in Wahredua has a reason to wish Hoffmeister dead. His search takes him to the Ozark Volunteers, reincarnated as the Bright Lights movement, but it also leads him into a sanctuary of radical Christianity. Meanwhile, an antifa activist has arrived in town, calling for Hoffmeister's death and threatening total war with the Bright Lights.As Hazard continues to look for answers, he becomes a target too-and not just because he's helping Hoffmeister. The Keeper of Bees is still at large, and the killer hasn't lost interest in Emery Hazard. Not yet. Not, Hazard begins to suspect, until the Keeper has taken everything Hazard holds dear.
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6 primary books7 released booksHazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords
Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords is a 7-book series with 6 primary works first released in 2019 with contributions by Gregory Ashe.
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Re-read 9/20/21 – 9/23/21
I said everything I wanted the first time around and the love has only redoubled. This reread has just been a chance to really savor the details, like how the Orpheus & Eurydice tale parallels with H&S. I also highlighted whole pages. As a New Yorker I'm bemused by Hazard's ‘frugalness', complaining about pants that cost more than $30 and coffee more than $2.
On to the next ...
******
First Read 8/5/20 – 8/6/20**
What to say? Come off like a broken record? (dating myself), a besotted fan girl? some kind of [a:Gregory Ashe|1179529|Gregory Ashe|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1561907752p2/1179529.jpg] sycophant? I'll try not to. Try being the operative word.
[b:Police Brutality|48999647|Police Brutality (Hazard and Somerset A Union of Swords, #2)|Gregory Ashe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1574894757l/48999647.SY75.jpg|74415994] continues the growing pains of an adult relationship. The adult part is probably the most important aspect. Emery and John-Henry are only ten (10) months into a relationship, living together, being homeowners, and sharing a daughter. Yes, they have a shared history, but they also have independent histories of past loves, successes, and failures. Did they really know each other in high school? They didn't. They had ideas, misconceived assumptions, preconceptions, and fantasies (more Emery than JH) about one another based on fragmentary and faulty information. Now they're adults. Actual adults. But also guys.
Emery, despite his controlled, put-together exterior, his championing of logic, is oft times tone deaf to the right thing to say and absolutely flummoxed by his love for John. He doesn't know how to act or react. What's too much? How to remain himself while utterly subsumed by reciprocated love? As a bonus he's still dealing with PTSD from the Haverford and a life-altering career change. It's not easy. John is on this journey with him, perhaps in the harder position of seeing his love struggle and having to let them figure it out on his own. How do our two lovebirds deal? Let Rebeca tell you:
“When you love someone, you know all the secret ways to hurt them. Sometimes you know without knowing you know, and then they come out in the heat of the moment and it's ... it's even more awful that way, I think.”
Emery and John get down, dirty, and almost nasty with each other. The growing pains are harsh but the making up is sooo good and I feel like they actually learn and try to do better with each step. Sometimes they fail, but that's human, and these two are utterly human. Hazard contending with his feelings of no longer being police, the events of [b:Criminal Past|41103639|Criminal Past (Hazard and Somerset #6)|Gregory Ashe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533944202l/41103639.SY75.jpg|64217590], feelings of having failed Mitchell, wanting, needing to keep Somers with him, in his life, happy but also safe ... all that tore me up inside. Luckily GA gave us some comic relief (I'm sure he'll have further purpose) in the form of Gray Dulac. I alternately wanted to smack him and had tears from laughing at his comments. He brought some much needed levity and I'm glad he got a prize/comeuppance Darnell Kirby in the end. Let's see how that plays out.
Yes, there was a case(s) which weren't particularly mysterious but serve to further develop characters in the town of Wahredua, ones I'm pretty sure will continue to play a significant part in the overarching case.
Perhaps what I like best about GA is that he doesn't do stock characters: I love Emery but he can be downright obtuse & hurtful, John has a drinking problem, some days I'd rather hang out with some of the less extreme members of the Ozark Volunteers than some of the ‘left wing' academics from Wroxall, and then he gives us Wesley. If ever there was a character who could be fitted with a holy nimbus it would be Wesley and yet ... utterly human down to being an adulterous pastor & ungrateful liar. I love it.
Lastly a BIG CHEER for Cora for saving Emery from himself and confiscating that list, being an awesome human, and the best ex ever.
