I’ve said before that Layla Reyne’s books can be hit or miss for me, so I was pleased to find that Dead Draw, the first book in her new Perfect Play series, was mostly a hit. It’s fast paced, with plenty of action and a steamy central romance, and although loosely tied to the Fog City series, and one of the principals appeared as a secondary character in her standalone novel, What We May Be, there are no overlapping story threads, so a new listener could start here with no problems.
Special Agent Emmett Marshall, a legal attaché with the FBI, has been working to bring down the group of terrorists responsible for the death of his best friend and mentor some three years earlier, but a serious mis-step sees him screwing up an FBI operation in the US. His intention had been to try to flush out the people funding the terrorists, but instead, he ends up sending them to ground and completely blowing eighteen months of hard graft put in by Special Agent Levi Bishop and his team, who have been hot on the trail of a group of people traffickers.
Marsh isn’t going to let this set-back stop him, but he needs an in with Bishop’s team as well as to find a way to atone for his screw-up. The trouble is, there isn’t a way for him to do either of those things legitimately, as he works in a completely different division of the FBI, so he comes up with an alternative plan. Tracking Levi down to a fancy San Francisco restaurant, Marsh sits himself down at Levi’s table – uninvited – and shocks the hell out of him by proposing they get married. Being Levi’s husband will enable him to keep tabs on the case and help with the investigation unofficially, and in return, he’s prepared to offer Levi a large enough sum of money that will alleviate his financial worries for the foreseeable future.
Levi lost his wife to cancer two years before, and he’s struggling both personally and financially. Being a single parent with a demanding job is tough, and although he’s a good dad, he constantly worries that he’s failing his fourteen-year-old son, David, and isn’t there for him enough. He’s deeply in debt thanks to medical bills; the final demands are piling up, the family car is in danger of repossession and it’s all utterly overwhelming. The handsome cowboy with the ever-present Stetson and the Texas drawl could be the answer to Levi’s prayers – financially, at least. And maybe in other ways as well…
Okay, so marriage of convenience plots are difficult to pull off in contemporary settings and I have no idea whether this premise is even vaguely plausible, but Levi and Marsh have chemistry up the wazoo from the off and the slow-burn romance that follows is worth suspending your disbelief for.
Layla Reyne is very good at writing books that feel like TV shows or movies; fast-moving and action-packed, featuring engaging principals with a nice line in banter, and secondary characters who are good foils for the leads. I admit that sometimes, her plots can feel overly complicated and difficult to follow, and there were times here I had to back up to figure something out, but the important thing is that the money trail shows that Marsh’s terrorists and Levi’s people traffickers are linked, and the two of them are determined to bring down the entire organisation. There’s a secondary plotline that kicks off when Marsh is assigned an identity-theft case by the SAC (we know he’s a bad guy because he’s a homophobic arsehole), which seems unrelated at first, and I liked the way it’s worked into the main plot.
Levi and Marsh are a likeable but damaged pair, both carrying emotional baggage that feels right considering their ages (Levi is thirty-eight, Marsh forty-six.) Levi has spent two years mourning the wife he loved deeply and worries about how it will affect his son when he decides to have a new relationship. He doesn’t think he’s quite there yet, but his mother certainly does and is one of those annoying ‘you need to get out there again’ types who keeps trying to set him up. Marsh is charming and flirtatious, but has a habit of falling for emotionally unavailable men, so Levi is exactly his type. Marsh knows from the outset that becoming involved with him is a bad idea, but the more time he spends with Levi and with David, and the more he gets to see behind Levi’s prickly exterior to the vulnerable man beneath, a man who is tired of fighting all the time who needs someone to share his burdens, even for a little while, the more Marsh wants to be that person, no matter that he’s risking a broken heart.
The author builds the attraction and sexual tension between the two men really well, with lots of longing looks and glancing touches that just add to the heat growing between them. I appreciated that when they do finally give into what they both want, Marsh makes it absolutely clear to Levi that he’s offering to help take the pressure off, just for a little while, and not asking for or expecting anything further.
The one thing I really didn’t like is the way Marsh goes about getting Levi to marry him. He turns up out of the blue, at the restaurant that was obviously special to Levi and his late wife and on his wedding anniversary – blithely announces he’s found out about Levi’s financial situation and his taste in porn, and implies he’ll drop it in the wrong ears if Levi doesn’t agree to his proposal! I think it’s meant to be playful – and the author makes it clear that Levi is out (he’s pansexual) – but I found it uncomfortable. Thankfully however, Ms. Reyne moves swiftly on and it’s never mentioned again, so I decided to move on, too. I had a few other niggles, though. As in other books by this author, there’s an over reliance on the genius hacker who can discover literally anything at the push of a button, and the competition between Levi’s mother and aunt, who have some kind of rivalry that involves one-upping each other at family weddings is just… weird and unnecessary.
Christian Leatherman has narrated a few of Layla Reyne’s books but this is the first time I’ve listened to him. He has a pleasant, slightly husky voice, and employs a variety of different character voices and accents to good effect, portraying the two leads distinctly and differentiating all the characters effectively throughout. Marsh’s Texas drawl encompasses his character perfectly – a big man with a big heart and a vulnerability he allows few to see – and I liked how he slowly rounds out Levi’s slightly deeper, clipped tones as he begins to unwind a little once he realises Marsh really is in his corner. Mr. Leatherman’s female voices are good, too, and the New York accent he gives one of the other team members sounded decent to my English ears! The emotional connection between Marsh and Levi comes through strongly, and I liked his interpretation of David, who is a believable fourteen-year-old, both on paper and in the performance. The one real criticism I have is that Mr. Leatherman has a tendency to put pauses in odd places in sentences and phrases; they’re not long pauses, it’s just that they’re in the wrong place, and this affects the rhythm of the speech. It didn’t take me out of the story or spoil my enjoyment to any great degree, but it’s definitely noticeable.
My reservations about both story and narration are fairly small ones, so I’m putting Dead Draw in the ‘recommend’ column. Please be aware, however, that this is book one in a series with an overarching plotline, so the story does not finish here. There’s a hopeful HFN for Marsh and Levi, but the bad guys aren’t done with them yet, and I’ll be back for book two, Bad Bishop, when it’s released later this year.
Caz
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