Format read: ebook purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: M/M Romance, Romantic Suspense
Series: Cole McGinnis #4
Length: 228 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Date Released: March 28, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Sheila Pinelli needed to be taken out.

Former cop turned private investigator Cole McGinnis never considered committing murder. But six months ago, when Jae-Min’s blood filled his hands and death came knocking at his lover’s door, killing Sheila Pinelli became a definite possibility.

While Sheila lurks in some hidden corner of Los Angeles, Jae and Cole share a bed, a home, and most of all, happiness. They’d survived Jae’s traditional Korean family disowning him and plan on building a new life—preferably one without the threat of Sheila’s return hanging over them.

Thanks to the Santa Monica police mistakenly releasing Sheila following a loitering arrest, Cole finally gets a lead on Sheila’s whereabouts. That is, until the trail goes crazy and he’s thrown into a tangle of drugs, exotic women, and more death. Regardless of the case going sideways, Cole is determined to find the woman he once loved as a sister and get her out of their lives once and for all.

My Review:

First of all, read this before reading Down and Dirty. The two books present two different perspectives on the same set of events. Dirty Deeds is the foreground story, with Cole McGinnis, as usual, knee deep (or higher) in a case that he probably shouldn’t have gotten involved in but couldn’t help himself.

Down and Dirty is all the stuff going on at the same time that happens out of Cole’s sight and hearing. It’s the story of how things got to the point of the last line in Dirty Deeds, which will drive you crazy if you’ve read the rest of the series.

And you should read the rest of the series (Dirty Kiss, Dirty Secret, Dirty Laundry) . It is awesome romantic suspense, sometimes more suspense and sometimes more romance, featuring Cole McGinnis and the man he falls in love with, Kim Jae Min. Like so many excellent detective series, it’s not just Cole and Jae-Min, but also the family they create around them (especially Jae’s cat Neko) who make the series special.

Cole has a bad case of “white knight” syndrome. He has a tendency to try to jump in and rescue everyone, whether they want it or not, and whether it is a good idea from his perspective, or not. Or rather, Cole always thinks its a good idea at the time, while his friends and family are left either bailing him out of jail or waiting at a hospital, sometimes both.

But the case in Dirty Deeds hits very close to home. Cole became a private detective after a few years on the LAPD. As an out cop, Cole made as many enemies as he did friends, but he didn’t know just how many enemies he had until after his cop partner and best friend shot Cole, Cole’s lover, Rick, and himself. Cole’s never known why. But his settlement from the LAPD enabled him to set up his P.I. business.

While Cole hasn’t put any of the events completely behind him, he has moved on into a new life with Jae-Min. That life is threatened when his ex-partner’s drug-crazed widow comes to Cole’s house and shoots Jae-Min, then flees into the wind.

Cole needs to find Sheila so that he can feel safe. Or as safe as he ever lets himself be. What he needs is to make sure that Sheila can’t come back and try again, because Cole can’t face the idea of anyone else he loves dying in his arms.

Which doesn’t mean that hunting Sheila down won’t get him killed. Because Sheila wasn’t just out for a twisted kind of revenge. She’s gotten herself in much too deep with some very nasty people, in addition to falling down the meth rabbit hole.

If Sheila doesn’t kill Cole, her enemies just might.

And if you can’t get the phrase, “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap“, the title to an old rock album by AC/DC, out of your head, it’s totally appropriate. This is definitely a story where a lot of dirty deeds get done on the cheap, and it’s disastrous for all concerned.

Escape Rating A: I read Down and Dirty first by accident, and wondered why that felt like half a book. This is the other half, and it’s awesome.

This story, like all the previous entries in the series (start with Dirty Kiss, reviewed here), is told by Cole from his first-person perspective. We only see what he sees and know what he knows, which is how he manages to get blindsided by the events that happen outside his narrow focus on Sheila.

There’s a whole lot of stuff that Cole will find out about after the fact. But before the fact, we have Cole’s hunt for the woman who shot his lover. Cole and Ben, his police partner, were best friends. Cole spent time with Ben’s family, and knew the woman Sheila used to be before Ben killed himself. He’s shocked at the change in her, and sees her as another one of Ben’s victims. What he doesn’t know is why she came back around and shot Jae-Min. Cole has to find out what set her off, so he can prevent her from doing it again.

So Cole, as usual, is in the middle of a case, but not the case he thought he was solving. First, it turns out the Sheila was into a whole lot of nasty stuff as a way of paying for her drug habit. The kind of nasty business that gets people killed by gunfire long before their drug of choice does them in.

Except that Cole’s drug of choice seems to be adrenaline, so…

In addition to the case, because it’s Sheila, Cole finds himself dealing with all the crap he still has in his head about Ben’s and Rick’s deaths. Cole spent so much time in rehab after the shooting, that he managed to completely suppress his feelings about the sudden loss of two people he loved. He’d kept himself trapped between the DENIAL and ANGER stages of grief, and hadn’t moved on. This case forces him to deal with some of the past crap. It’s necessary if he wants to move forward in his relationship with Jae-Min, not that Jae doesn’t have crap of his own.

But Cole’s past gets dredged up, and it needs to. There’s also some of the usual trademark snark and banter between Cole and Bobby, and a marvelous scene between Cole and his office manager/adopted mother Claudine. I laughed out loud, to the point of annoying my husband, over Cole’s thoughts about Jae’s cat Neko, who is a terrifying little treasure. I love reading the perspective of someone who is just as annoyed at feline behavior as I am.

I just love these people, this family. I want more stories of their adventures.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Format read: ebook borrowed from the library
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: M/M romance
Series: Cole McGinnis, #3
Length: 260 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Date Released: April 18, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

For ex-cop turned private investigator Cole McGinnis, each day brings a new challenge. Too bad most of them involve pain and death. Claudia, his office manager and surrogate mother, is still recovering from a gunshot, and Cole’s closeted boyfriend, Kim Jae-Min, suddenly finds his teenaged sister dumped in his lap. Meanwhile, Cole has his own sibling problems—most notably, a mysterious half brother from Japan whom his older brother, Mike, is determined they welcome with open arms.

As if his own personal dramas weren’t enough, Cole is approached by Madame Sun, a fortune-teller whose clients have been dying at an alarming rate. Convinced someone is after her customers, she wants the matter investigated, but the police think she’s imagining things. Hoping to put Sun’s mind at ease, Cole takes the case and finds himself plunged into a Gordian knot of lies and betrayal where no one is who they are supposed to be and Death seems to be the only card in Madame Sun’s deck.

My Review:

I love Neko. I would say that I want to have an evil little world dominator cat just like her, but I already do. LaZorra and Neko are definitely members of the same species. The author has captured that feline ability to look winsome while plotting their human’s downfall and wrapping their slave around their little paws so very well.

Even better, all the side-characters in the Cole McGinnis series are drawn every bit as well as Neko. They just aren’t all quite as cute.

Like the other books in this series so far, the title Dirty Laundry reflects both the case that Cole has to solve and the dramas that are going on in his own life and that of his sometimes partner Jae-Min.

The case is about two fortunetellers in the Korean community. One is a little old lady who thinks that someone is out to get her clients. Either that, or the poor woman has some seriously bad karma. Three of her clients either dropped dead or were killed right after their appointments with her. She’s worried because she didn’t tell any of them that she saw darkness in their futures.

Her rival fortune teller is an old man who manages to embody every single gay stereotype known to man, including keeping an obvious twink as his receptionist. But the receptionist knows the truth; the old man is only pretending to be gay, so that he appears safe to all the women (and their protective husbands) who come to him to have their fortunes told. In reality, he’s sleeping with way too many of his younger female clients, and has been for far too long.

Something that comes back to serious bite him in the ass, but not until after it has shot its way through the community.

This story is all about family; the family you’re born to, the family you make, and the family that creeps out from under the carpet years after you thought everything was settled.

Jae-Min’s sister runs away from their crazy mother. While staying with Jae-Min, she is introduced to the truth about her brother. Unfortunately, the way she gets introduced is by Cole sneaking up behind her thinking she’s Jae-Min. Cole’s mistake nearly costs him the love of his life.

Meanwhile, Cole discovers that his family tree has a few secrets of its own. He’s always thought his mother died giving birth to him. That would be too easy for his life. Instead, he discovers that he and Mike have a younger half brother who is fully Japanese, unlike either of their two half-Irish selves.

Cole’s mother ran back to Japan, and had another family. His half-brother Ichiro is now an adult and wants to meet the two men who are his family. Cole is not ready to have another brother, and he’s especially not ready to accept that his mother abandoned him with his abusive father; no matter what her excuse might have been.

And last but definitely not least, Cole is still dealing with his guilt over the near-fatal shooting of his adoptive mother and office manager Claudia. She stopped a bullet that was meant for Cole. He can’t deal with her illness, and he definitely can’t deal with her absence. But Claudia is a force of nature that absolutely will not be stopped from doing what she wants, including coming back to work and taking care of Cole. As far as Claudia is concerned, she may have given birth to 8 sons, but she has 9, and Cole needs her.

Neko just manipulates everyone and everything to maintain her place as the center of it all.

Escape Rating A-: I love the extended family that continues to wrap itself around Cole and his cases. I haven’t mentioned his best friend Bobby Dawson for a while, but Bobby has a big part to play in this story in keeping Cole among the living and sober while Jae-Min is dealing with the problems that his sister’s discovery have dragged into his life.

Jae-Min’s culture, and his guilt complex, tell him that he should give Cole up. But Cole is the only person who has ever made him happy, and he just can’t. But the difficulties tear him apart, and often look like they are going to tear Cole and Jae-Min apart too.

I really liked the way that the case that Cole is investigating parallelled his real-life problems. It’s all about family. Cole and Jae-Min are both incapable of completely abandoning theirs, no matter what they do. They get hurt again and again because of their parents. At the same time, they are trying to move forward in their lives. Cole often refuses to acknowledge how much pain he is in, while Jae-Min acts like he doesn’t feel he deserves happiness.

The way that Claudia’s family rallies around both her and Cole serves as a counterpoint to all the various families in this story that abandon and neglect each other. Cole (and this series, are lucky to have her at its heart.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.