**This piece contains some spoilers for events and character development in the book, but not the main mystery! Just be aware if you choose to read!**
Madison Square Murders by C.S. Poe is more LGBT murder mystery than purely a romance, although that is definitely a part of it. But I think the romance element is well-paced. I would not ask for it to have more sex because it does not need it.
The protagonist, Everett Larkin, is a thirty-five year old cold case detective employed by the NYPD. He is in a tumultuous marriage with a first-grade teacher, Noah Rider. Larkin has a very monotonous and blunt way of speaking that causes most people to dislike him, including other detectives in his unit. (He is nicknamed ‘Grimm’ by most of his colleagues, like he is a personification of death. This is an assumption of him based on his demeanor and position. His well-coordinated suits have pops of color that are opposite the stereotypical personification of death.) Some member of his unit, along with other police personnel, attack him verbally with homophobic slurs. Despite this, he is open and unapologetic about his sexuality.
Everett Larkin excels as a detective due to a memory disorder called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), which allows him to recall personal memories down to the exact detail. However, this only works for long-term memories. He struggles to remember short-term items outside of his usual routine, often forgetting where he left things that he placed just hours earlier, and has to meticulously record appointments on his phone calendar. Larkin was not born with this disorder, rather it was a result of a head injury inflicted on April 2, 2002. This is alluded to through brief flashbacks and Larkin’s reaction to thunder and baseball bats in the present day, as they are triggers for his trauma. It seems his first love, a boy named Patrick, was murdered on that day. It is assumed Patrick never got justice for his murderer, because Larkin puts a lot of emphasis on remembering him, and remembering all the forgotten victims of cold cases. Memory also plays a role in the romance side of the story.
The book kicks off with Larkin’s arrival at the scene of a case involving a skeleton that has been unearthed from under a crabapple tree in Madison Square Park. The peculiar thing is that buried with the skeleton is a cast iron death mask. Because this feels like it would be an important piece of evidence, and a way to identify the victim, Larkin is recommended he contact Ira Doyle, a forensic artist.
Ira Doyle is a thirty-nine year old man who is automatically friendly and quippy. Larkin is attracted to him at first meeting, even though Doyle gets under his skin at first. Doyle is skilled at his job and very conscious of Larkin’s panic attacks. Larkin is drawn to him because he understands memory. Towards the end of their first encounter, Doyle says, “I can give John Doe back his identity so someone can remember him” (40). While Larkin needs to pair up with Doyle for this case, he gains respect for him after Doyle says that, because “Doyle had unknowingly touched on his love language. Remembrance”.
There is a fair amount about love languages in this— how Doyle touches on Larkin’s without knowing, and how Larkin can pinpoint Doyle’s fairly easily. Doyle’s care and patience with Larkin within just a few days strikes a chord inside Larkin that he doesn’t feel with his husband.
Because it’s established in the beginning of the book that Larkin is married, I was afraid this was going to be a cheating book. Larkin finds Doyle attractive and feels like he truly cares and understands him. They happen to meet at a time when Larkin’s relationship with his husband is threatening to collapse at any minute. Larkin’s budding relationship with Doyle doesn’t seem to be deliberate adultery, but more of a confirmation of feelings and the beginning of the inevitable end of his marriage. After Larkin kisses Doyle for the first time, Doyle hesitates because he knows Larkin is married. They don’t go any further, and Larkin immediately goes home and tells his husband. For the remainder of the book, it is implied that Larkin is going to go through with a divorce, and he and Doyle don’t seem to be getting super serious—yet. This is book one in a series, after all, so this is only the beginning.
I do feel bad for Noah in all of this, because it’s not exactly healthy of Larkin to be ignoring him when they really needed to have a serious conversation, but it seemed to me that neither of them were happy and splitting will be for the best. Especially because Larkin needs somebody who will be patient with him, and Noah mostly seems more caught up in the fact they’re not having sex anymore without bothering to ask Larkin what he’s dealing with: “And it broke Larkin’s heart. Broke his heart that he’d been begging for help, dying in front of Noah for a year, and the one who made Larkin eat, who hugged him, who gave that hair tie a tug to make sure he was okay, had been an absolutely gorgeous and kind man he wasn’t married to” (211). I think this is a situation where both parties are at fault for their failing relationship, and it was a long time coming.
Along with these thoughts, I also took note of things I wanted to remember craft-wise, that I can look back on when trying to write on my own. I did get a bit lazy with it towards the end, but here’s what I had:
The book opens mid-scene, in the action, diving right in and letting the scene unfold. The reader gets a date and a time immediately, which makes sense coming from Larkin’s point of view, as those are details that will remain in his memory.
The reader learns about minor characters quickly through Larkin’s interactions with them, how they speak to him, and how they act around him. For example, the first character the readers meet is Detective Ray O’Halloran, who greets Larkin by quoting The Book of Revelation and calling Larkin “Death”. He slaps Larkin “on the back like a frat boy with something to prove” (8). This immediately gives the reader the impression O’Halloran is the type to be joky, but in a mean way. Like a bully, which is how Larkin describes him lines later: “big in all the ways that lent bullies the self-assurance of it being perfectly fine to pick fights with someone shorter, more slender in build, even if Larkin was a thirty-five-year-old man with ten years on the force, and O’Halloran with even more” (9). The reader also gets background on Larkin here, too.
An important character trait about Larkin is introduced because it opposes his current situation/surroundings. In Larkin’s point of view, the office of the head of the Department of Parks and Recreation “looked as if they were testing military-grade bombs on the premises” (55). Which was preceded by the info that “Larkin’s ability to cope day-to-day came from a strict sense of routine. Even with long hours and the curveballs thrown at career detectives, whether that was a line of questioning taking a sudden one-eighty or getting called into the precinct at two in the morning, Larkin had always been able to keep a sense of order among the chaos” (54).
An emotional character moment was followed with an important plot point when Doyle’s memory about lemon candy (brought up after one of Larkin’s observations) directly preceded the discovery of their “John Doe”’s identity.
That’s it for my thoughts on the book, which I write more for my own sake than anybody else’s. I tend to blast through really good books and fail to retain a lot about them, so this is my first attempt at a practice of writing my own book reports. If you’ve read through this and decide to read the book, good! I think this was a really well done mystery with very interesting characters.
