Thank you to netgalley and Bold Strokes Books for giving me this book.

This is the second book to feature Heath Barrington and Alan Keyes. I did not feel that I needed to have read the first in order to follow this story set in post-WW2 USA.

The detection theme seemed to me to be quite straightforward and I had most of the solution worked out just after halfway through.Without spoiling the plot, a swindler disappears overboard during the night while Barrington is nearby.The man he has swindled is on the boat as well as a heavy, a middle-aged man and his elderly aunt.There is also an undercover policeman-Riker- acting as steward.Whodunnit?

The second theme I found interesting.What was it like to be a homosexual man in late 1940's America? I thought this was handled reasonably well and mostly rang true (although it would be good to have someone who lived through this time review the book).Barrington is caught between the need to preserve a straight public persona and his desire for a private relationship with another man.He faces double jeopardy-he is a law officer breaking the law and he is homosexual.He loves Keyes but is very attracted to Riker. He is taken with the idea of a marriage of convenience but is repulsed by Riker's easy attitude to deceiving his wife.All of this seems entirely plausible.

What I did not get from the book was a feeling that the author had captured the flavour of the period despite references to the war and the disruption it caused to personal lives.A minor point, perhaps.
Overall very enjoyable and I look forward to more.

An interesting and enjoyable noir mystery with a gay twist. The writing style is clear and easy to read and so you are pulled into the story quite quickly. Character development is good and there is clear differentiation between the roles. The protagonists are likeable if a little cliched. The story is somewhat formulaic but that is in line with dime novel mysteries. The gay twist is interesting and adds to the character development and the potential for tension between individuals. It is all very superficial, but once again that is in line with the genre. The twist at the end is so predictable and signalled early that the reader may well find themselves anticipating plot developments which does spoil the read. Overall it was a pleasant reading experience

3.5 stars

The second mystery in David Pederson's M / m mystery series. Heath is still honing his detective skills....and still trying to solidify his relationship with Allen. A light mystery that wasn't hard to figure out, but still enjoyable.

I had some minor issues with this book but overall it was a solid piece of work...The solution to the mystery was fairly obvious though.

Well worth a read. I hadn't read the first in the series. This didn't affect my enjoyment at all.
Pros: Good sense of period.
Interesting sparse style which fitted the story and the noir style.
Cons: I figured out what had happened at the half way marker, about 40% before the narrator. For a crack detective he wasn't so hot.
The will he/won't he marry a woman to divert attention made up a big part of Heath's thoughts for the first part of the book, but it then seemed to just get dropped.
Heath and Alan have a lot of their 'private' conversations in public places. And Heath cries when Riker is shot. No wonder people speculate about his predilections.
There was little to no passion between Heath and Alan (in fact the only scene where Heath seems tempted is with Riker). I had trouble believing in their relationship. Just one scene behind closed doors could have changed that.
All in all I enjoyed this as a historical mystery with gay characters. I wasnt sold on the romance though.
I am interested enough to buy the first book.

Small-time thug Gregory Slavinsky borrows $25,000 from shady businessman / gangster Ballantine and after missing a loan payment, books a weekend cruise on a four-cabin Lake Michigan steamer, which leaves Milwaukee with stops in Chicago, Mackinac Island and Ontario Canada. That cruise books up very quickly, with Ballantine and his bodyguard George going along to make sure Slavinsky doesn't escape into Canada along with the money, Mr. Alex Whitaker and Mrs. Vivian Woodfork (his elderly aunt in full mourning gear) plus Detective Heath Barrington and undercover policeman Grant Riker on board to monitor the "criminal element." And when a body goes overboard and the $25K is missing, is it suicide or murder? And where's the money?

The murder/mystery is front and center here, but what interests me most about Death Goes Overboard is the relationship between Barrington and Alan Keyes. It's 1947, homosexuality is still considered a mental defect with the distinct possibility of losing your job, getting arrested or "put in an institution and diagnosed as diseased with little potential for being cured" if you are found out. Do you hide in plain sight by marrying and raising a family while seeing men on the side (as one of our cast of characters does), do you claim to be too busy with your career to marry, or do you live discretely and hope one day things will change? Pedersen really captures the feel of the era while giving us two men navigating their way through all the possibilities.

Death Goes Overboard is primarily a murder/mystery with gay characters rather than a M/M romance. The mystery holds your interest throughout and does a good job at giving readers a view into life as a gay man in post WWII America. I'm looking forward to the next Heath Barrington mystery and give Death Goes Overboard 4 stars.

3,5 stars

It is a classical mystery that you don't come across too often lately. I enjoyed an old-fashioned style David S. Pederson chosen for his Heath Barrington Mystery.

In Death Goes Overboard the author gives us more insights into a private internal world of his main character, or better to say in his personal emotional chaos. I can imagine that many readers who focus on the romance rather than on mystery can consider this as a positive gain. For my part, I'd say, it would have been a good decision if the mystery part had remained on the same level as in the book 1. Unfortunately, being too busy with Heath's personal fight, the author slightly neglected the mystery development. It wasn't difficult to guess who did it, aside from tiny deviations. But the fact that cop Alan, Heath's secret lover and his professional partner, wasn't very helpful in solving the crime, contradicted with my picture of him from the first book.


All in all, it was an enjoyable read. I'd recommend it to all fans of a classic mystery.

This was my second Pederson this month, I had read the first in this series recently. Like the first book Pederson keeps his style of writing which is very 'tell', visual and uncomplicated.

Here we have a case which starts out across the water and continues in the city so we have two different type of scenarios with their relative detecting techniques. Great for readers who are armchair detectives and enjoy guessing (correctly) where the author is going with the story. Those who enjoy the twisty turns and the path taken, rather than the unknown rabbit pulled out of a hat we did not even know about.

This time round in addition to the case, we have our Heath dealing with serious life questions, how he is going to combine what he needs with what he wishes for in terms of career and the kind of life he wants to live. Is he going to bow down to society's pressure or is he going to make a path for himself. I guess this is a struggle he will have to battle long and hard well into the future.

An ARC gently given by publisher/author via Netgalley in return for a review."

3.5 stars

Book two in the Heath Barrington series sees Detective Heath going under cover on a passenger steamer, trying to capture a criminal who appears to be getting ready to commit murder. When the murder actually takes place Detective Heath realises there is much more to the man overboard than meets the eye.

As Heath and the dashing Alan Keyes follow the clues, they are gradually led through a number of improbable twists and turns, seeking to untangle what seems to be a straight forward death but which is far more complex than they could have first imagined.

It is a good murder story with a steady pace, but I liked book one much more than this one. Having said that this story is good and it is great to be back with Detective Heath.

The story is has a few key characters which makes it easy to follow and kind of heightens the anticipation of the reader because you know that there must be some hard to unravel plot and there is.

We also get to see Heath and Alan as they deal with societal pressures, evaluating their relationship and wondering whether it would be better to find wives and settle down even though they love each other. As usual they pursue the clues to the end and along the way discover the courage and determination which their own relationship needs.

For me the best character was George, the gentle ox of a criminal who does exactly what his crooked boss tells him to and who is deeply devoted to him. I couldn't help but wonder whether there were unrequited feelings there.

I liked the setting of the story and the supporting characters. I also appreciated the way in which we got to see both Heath and Alan working through the incredibly difficult issues confronting them and they way they emerged from this mystery even more committed to each other.

A good murder mystery although not my favourite in the series.

Copy provided by Bold Stroke Books via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

*I received this book from NetGalley, and Bold Strokes Books in return for a fair review.*

Like the prior book in this series, and as expected, this book here stars Detective Heath Barrington of the Milwaukee Police Department. Unlike the prior book in this series, some part of the police work in this book actually occurs in Milwaukee. Though, despite jurisdiction issues, some of it also occurs outside Milwaukee’s city borders – like on a boat on one of the Great Lakes (Lake Michigan).

There are several plot lines but two main ones of importance: 1) Everyone, including literally an aunt, let Heath know that being a single man of his age is super risky and leads to talk of a certain nature (like, say, ‘it’s obvious that he is gay’; there’s an additional ‘especially the way he is so neat and how he dresses’ but I’ll let that pass) – as in: being a gay man in post WWII America is difficult and certain things are needed to be done to cover that up which can lead to a bunch of lying, deception, and the like (to be fair – without some level of lying, a gay man will find themselves out of work (at least with the police, and possibly in a mental institution somewhere getting electric shocks to their balls); 2) police work occurs.

Heath continues to date Officer Alan Keyes, though is having two issues in regards to that – 1) both are men and it is 1947; 2) does he actually want a steady relationship with anyone? That plot-line is followed throughout the book. Of major importance in the book. Regarding that ‘gay issue’, I have two things that came to mind while reading this book – 1) Heath seemed a lot more naïve than I would have expected for a man of his ‘advanced’ age (his exact age might have been given at some point, though he is somewhere in his 30s, and some comments would lead one to suspect him to be in the latter half of his thirties; <spoiler>the concept of a beard, of marrying a woman and having fun with men – with or without the wives knowledge, was something Heath never realized could happen; also something he had never heard of was a lavender marriage – gay man, lesbian woman, marry as each other’s ‘cover’ – granted, the first time I saw reference to that type of arrangement was in Ann Bannon’s book of the 1950s/60s – and I doubt she came up with the idea completely on her own (Bannon had both types of marriages in her series) and yes, I know 1959 is not 1947, and Heath seemed so naïve regarding gay issues, that I doubt he read gay fiction, much less lesbian pulp</spoiler>); 2) he and another gay man in the book seem to fall into a particular gay stereotype I didn’t expect to see – both him and Riker (another police officer in the book, more on him later), seem to be rather ‘causal’ about sex – more so Riker (Heath is more tempted by the idea and keeps being inches from falling into that type of lifestyle) – as in, all the sex they can get, with men, as much as they can get, regardless of the man or the circumstances (<spoiler>it was so much of a gay stereotype that I actually began to believe that Riker was actually bait – either from some higher ups in the police force trying to trick/trap Heath; or someone Alan Keyes got to ‘check on’ Heath since Heath was acting a little ‘pulling-away-ish’</spoiler>). So that story line flows through the book as well – that ‘should Heath, while eyeballing every man around him as a sexual object, decide that Alan is really ‘his’? Should Heath get a ‘beard’, get himself into a marriage? *proceeds to eyeball every woman around him as a means to an end – marriage cover*.

The other major plot being followed is a different type of mystery (what, there’s a kind of mystery involved in ‘will Heath chose some woman to marry? Stay with Alan? Stray?’). Gregor Slavinsky is taking a great lake cruise – and he is being followed by a man named Ballentine and his lackey George. Slavinsky has been in and out of prison – and has just recently gotten out. And has secured $25,000 of Ballentine’s money as a loan. And Slavinsky is beginning to miss payments. Not something criminals like to hear.

The police have wanted to ‘get’ Ballentine for a while now and believe that this is a perfect opportunity to catch him doing something illegal. So Heath is sent undercover on the Great Lake voyage as an insurance man. A new-to-the-series officer also is undercover as a steward – that would be the previously mentioned Riker.

There is a mystery, and plot A does lead to b, c, d, and the police are shown to use their brains to follow along. With the introduction of certain elements, I immediately knew ‘something’ was occurring, though it took a body going over the side of the boat for me to ‘know’ what was going on. And, while it took the rest of the book for the characters to catch up, I was correct. Mind you, despite that last sentence, the cops weren’t made to look too inexperienced/naïve/stupid – they followed logically along, including a few wrong guesses (real life isn’t ‘Cop: x occurred, didn’t it? Criminal: how did you know!!!’). I did have a problem with one element, maybe minor, maybe not important, but . . . well. <spoiler>As can occur in mystery novels – there comes the time when the brilliant detective reveals the plot points, or I mean, how he figured it out. One slight issue I had here is that the author went one step too far. He had his detective ‘know’ and ‘reveal’ why that whiskey bottle was in the cabin. But, while there is a logical explanation, and while he can logically come to the conclusion that ‘this’ is the reason for the whiskey bottle, he can’t ‘know’ that this is the reason – for everyone who could confirm the matter is dead – died before he put the facts together. Hence my ‘one step too far’ – one step too far in trying to make the police detective look brilliant. Now, all that needs to happen is a few word changes. Something like ‘it is likely that’ instead of ‘it was there because’. Semantics. Logically the steps, pieces, were laid for that specific clue to be found – except for the part where it had to remain speculation (<spoiler>’I also thought the bottle of whiskey in Gregor’s cabin was strange, as he drank martinis. [X] was the one who liked whiskey, but of course [x] didn’t’ want to risk [y] finding [x]’s bottle and getting smashed, so [x] kept it in Gregor’s cabin and used the connecting door . . . .’ - lot of speculation going on in that ‘reveal everything’ being treated as fact </spoiler></spoiler>.

The time on the ship was quite interesting, the mystery, despite several things I’ve stated, was also well enough crafted (a little heavy handed, but well enough crafted). The wandering eye is a character issue, not exactly one I wished to read, but feasible. As is those several talks about marriage (lavender or not). Overall a good book. I liked the first book more than the second, but second was good enough.

Rating: 3.65 to 3.85

March 6 2017

4.5 stars

Despite the seriousness of this story, it was a jolly good romp! I’m not normally a fan of first-person narration, but I became so invested in the case, I barely even noticed. The plot unfolds through the eyes and ears of Detective Heath Barrington, and he truly is a delightful character.

While we’re on characters, Alan’s snippy behavior hardly endeared him to me. However, once the mystery was solved, along with Alan’s help, I’d found myself warming to him.

Riker, while initially charming, is nothing short of a prick. I won’t go into the reasons I despised him for risk of spoilers.

The mystery kept me guessing right up to the very end, and even though I had my suspicions, I never could’ve guessed the outcome.

Even though this is book 2 in a series I feel it can be read as a standalone. I hadn’t read book 1 prior to picking it up and had no trouble following along. With that said, I am now about to back track and get my hands on a copy of the first in the series.

Verdict – highly recommended.