Tangled Web: An M/M Romance

By Lee Rowan

Book Review by Vincent Diamond

Having read Running Press's first two male/male romance releases, Transgressions and False Colors, I found Tangled Web a much stronger book, with more energy and action. It's not to the level of a contemporary action-adventure tale, of course, but Rowan has a good sense of pacing and offers readers more active scenes on the page along with a nice mix of point-of-view changes. The main characters, Brendan Townsend and Philip Carlisle, are sympathetic, believable, and easy to root for.

Set in 1816 London, the story follows Brendan as he tries to help his sometime lover Tony get out of a blackmail situation. Tony has dragged Brendan to a "gentlemen's club" that caters to homosexual and rough trade, and the book opens with a scene in which Tony has sex with a masked man in front of dozens of similarly masked onlookers. Tony is impetuous, indiscreet, and slightly stupid so Rowan has to work pretty hard to make Brendan's loyalty to him understandable. Given the historical context, though, and the need for total secrecy about homosexuality in the day, this works as motivation for Brendan to seek help when Tony is blackmailed because of his sexual orientation.

Enter Philip Calisle, the former colleague of Brendan's older brother, and a man with his own history of sexual confusion. As a young man, Philip had an unrequited crush on one of his military commanders, and his questions and fantasies since then have been pushed to the back of his mind by the grief of losing his wife and son during childbirth. When he meets Brendan, he pushes down his immediate attraction to the much younger man (of course he does! Hello, it's a romance!), and agrees to help with the blackmail issue. Philip lives (mostly; he's one of those historical characters with multiple homes, it seems) on a working horse breeding farm so he and Brendan have their mutual interest in all things equine to start their romance. (And in Rowan's favor, she gets the horse stuff right. It's a topic she's written about herself: writers who don't research horses—so accuracy in the horsiness end of it is important to her.)

Given the nature of the time and the story, there's a lot of narrative; it's to be expected. People reading male/male historical romances aren't looking for fast-paced, staccato action, and zippy Elmore Leonard-esque dialogue. They like languorous scenes of extended dialogue that dance around the Real Topic at Hand; they like vivid descriptions of olde England; and they like unrequited/unacknowledged/unacceptable love. The style of story either appeals to you or not.

Vincent Diamond
April 2010

Tangled Web: An M/M Romance
(Running Press, December 2009; ISBN-10: 0762436840)
Available at: Amazon | Amazon UK

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© 2010 Vincent Diamond. All rights reserved.

About the Author: Vincent Diamond's short story collection, Rough Cut, was released by Lethe Press in 2008. "An erotic wordsmith," says noted editor Richard Labonte in the foreword to the book, "...erotic fiction that possesses story-telling heft." Diamond's stories have appeared in Screaming Orgasms, Sex on the Beach, Coming Together: Under Fire, Country Boys, Truckers, Best Gay Romance 2007, Hot Cops, Love in a Lock-Up, Best Gay Love Stories 2005 and 2006, in the e-books Feathers, Chance Encounters, Under Arrest, and Play Ball from Torquere Press, and online at Fishnet, Clean Sheets and Ruthie's Club.
More info, with free stories and excerpts, available at: www.vincentdiamond.com.

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