The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Orientation (Borealis Investigations, 1)
By Gregory Ashe
Published by the author, 2019
Five stars

Oh, crap, here we go again. Having survived the Hazard and Somerset series, I was looking forward to something less, well, emotionally exhausting from the Borealis series.

No such luck.

I like that the book is set in a real place – a place I know a little from frequent visits – and I have dead ancestors in Saint Louis, so there’s that. I also like that Gregory Ashe introduces us little by little to the two main characters in this new series. He lets us get to know and appreciate these guys before he sucker-punches us.

There’s the sweet, auburn-haired, man-bun-wearing innocence of Shaw Aldrich, who we meet trying to execute a “downward dog” pose on a dirty kitchen floor. Then there’s his best friend and business partner North McKinney, a huge, handsome blue-collar boy who’s been Shaw’s best friend since their college roommate days.

So far, so good. It’s got a light touch at first, plenty of Laurel-and-Hardy-type humor with a slightly rom-com vibe…and then Ashe begins to reveal more about these two guys, digging into the complications that have defined their relationship since their school days. With each peeling back of a layer, the darkness grows more ominous, and, to speak the truth, the violence level ratchets up as well. I can’t give too much detail, because I don’t want to spoil the twists and turns in this very elaborate and carefully engineered plot.

I wonder, do gay men have revenge fantasies? Or is it just people who read detective mysteries? Do private detectives wreak more havoc than private citizens in general? I admit that, by the middle of the book, I was slightly stunned by the physical anger expressed on the pages – something the author does right up to almost the end, dropping a completely shocking scene into our laps at one point that I thought I’d misread at first. I gotta say, I was a little sorry to see that Shaw and North are just as effed-up as Hazard and Somerset. I had hoped for some kind of pull-back, a reprieve. Sigh. But there’s still Ashe’s fantastic, page-turning prose and deep-dive into character. He managed to get me very hooked on Shaw and North before the quiet, breathtaking little cliffhanger thrown in on the very last page.

And wouldn’t you know I’ve already bought “Triangulation,” the second in the series.
Damnit.