Memory of Darkness

Title: Memory Of Darkness
Author: P.A. Brown
Publisher: Amber Allure
Genre: M/M Contemporary  Romance, Mystery, Suspence.
Length: 219 pages
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

A guest review by Jenre

THE BLURB

Johnny Wager has been a loser all his life and proud of it. But when a West Hollywood twink ends up dead in a hotel room with Wager literally holding the bag, he knows his life is going to change for the worse. Pursued by the West Hollywood sheriffs for a murder he knows he didn’t commit, Wager has to stay one step ahead of them and prove his innocence. It doesn’t help matters any that his own son, Mark Wager, is a deputy sheriff who has joined the manhunt and has more reason than anyone to find the father who failed him all his life and bring him to justice.

Add Hyacinth, a six-foot-five drag queen from New Orleans, Taz, her Puerto Rican boyfriend, an ex-Marine porno filmmaker and his incontinent Basset Hound Columbo, and the Armenian mob chasing them all through the streets of Los Angeles and the art walks and canals of Venice Beach. Wager pursues his own answers to the question of who is trying to kill him in the sleazy bars and back alleys of Hollywood all the way to Cathedral City.

Can Wager stop the killers and reconcile with his son or will he end up being the next victim? Betrayed by friends, beset by his own conscience that has come back late in life with a vengeance, and the need to redeem himself, he battles the ruthless mob in the only way he knows how: with cunning and a total disrespect for the law.

THE REVIEW

When I first read this blurb to this book, I thought it might be a comedy. The blurb has a light tone to it and the middle paragraph which details all the various characters that the hero encounters in the book made it sound like one of those mad-cap races against time to prove the hero’s innocence. Therefore I was surprised to discover that there is very little comedy in Memory of Darkness. It’s a dark book, with dark themes and an initially very unlikable first person narrator.

The book opens with Johnny Wager (or Wager as he is known) picking up a twink called Bunny at a parade. They go to a ‘pay by the hour’ hotel and proceed to, well, F**k like bunnies (if you’ll pardon the pun). Whilst they are in the middle of this the door bursts open and masked men storm into the room and cold clock Wager. When Wager wakes up Bunny has been killed (in not a nice way – the squeamish amongst you may wish to skip this description), the cops are on their way and Wager is covered in Bunny’s blood. Wager then takes fright, escapes the room and spend the rest of the book trying to avoid the cops (and his son) and prove his innocence.

How you view this book will depend entirely on your feelings for Johnny Wager. He’s a narcissistic, drifter of a man who lives on the edge of what is considered lawful. In the course of the book he involves himself in several criminal activities including dealing drugs and stealing cars. He is also a self confessed loser having married young before realising he was gay and fathering a child who he then rarely saw and since then has drifted through life getting into trouble and never holding a job down for any length of time. He’s also a coward who thinks of nothing but himself. This wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for the amount of self-pitying drivel that he comes out with. He (thankfully) doesn’t make excuses for his own actions but he does whinge on about them constantly, telling the reader how he wished he’d been a better father, wished he could straighten out, wished he could settle down, wished he wasn’t such a whore, etc, etc. By the time I’d got part way through the book I wanted to smack Wager round the back of his head and tell him to pull himself together.

You may be wondering why, since I have an obvious dislike of the main character, I didn’t grade this book lower. Well, fortunately Wager manages to redeem himself by the end, so that I actually rather liked him by the time the book finishes. He makes a concerted effort to try and mend relations with his son (who is now a policeman) and he goes through a period of extreme remorse when his actions lead to a horrific event (which I won’t go into here as it would be a major spoiler).  Wager is also a victim of the redeeming power of the love of a good man when he meets Tyler, the marine turned porno-film maker from the blurb.  These three events mean that Wager spends the latter part of the book reflecting on his life and rather than whinging about it, he sets about trying to better himself (with more or less positive results).  A complete turn-around in character would have been completely unrealistic, but at least by the end there’s a glimmer of hope for Wager which made him much easier to like.

I have to admit that without the presence of Tyler, I’m not sure I would have liked his book. He lifts it out of the darkness and makes Wager a better man. Tyler is actually the opposite to Wager. He is good and honest. He’s an ex-marine which gives him integrity and hero status. He runs a porno film company which makes good money for him but also gives him and Wager a little common ground with the seedier side of life. Tyler is trusting and willing to give second chances. Most importantly, though, Tyler is able to look past Wager’s outwardly tough exterior and see a man who is starved of any affection and, by being openly affectionate towards Wager, Tyler is able to break through that toughness. The best scenes for me were those when Tyler and Wager were alone together as they showed the reader the sort of man Wager could become given the chance.

There are a number of secondary characters in Memory of Darkness, all of who are well rounded and beliveable – especially the character of Hyacinth who flits the line between someone who can be trusted or not. However, far and away the most important of these secondary characters is LA. PA Brown has an obvious love for this city and we are taken all over its various, different streets and neighbourhoods. The city is alternately beautiful and terrible; peaceful and riotous; safe and dangerous. The city provides not only a backdrop and a location for the events to take place, but also a reflection of the characters who live there, so Tyler lives in affluence, safe in his expensive house whereas Wager is effectively homeless and spends much time sleeping in grubby rooms.

I said at the beginning that this is a dark novel. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, especially as many of the characters are either morally corrupt or ambiguous. Wager is difficult to like and some of the things that happen in the book are violent and bloody. Despite this Memory of Darkness is engaging, the characters realistic, the setting vivid and the story well paced with many gripping action sequences interspersed with quieter reflective moments. Thus I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.