Full confession, I love murder mysteries and crime thrillers. I grew up on crime procedurals and British murder mysteries by Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and the like. As an adult I graduated from the tamer Perry Mason and Murder, She Wrote that my mom preferred to the more gruesome Law and Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, and CSI. However, my love for crime stories still remains, just see my enjoyment of Dark. While I enjoy the occasional romance, thrillers and mysteries are more my pace for summertime reading. Over the weekend, I sat down with Dal Maclean’s brand new release from Blind Eye Books: Object of Desire. It’s a story filled with mystery, angst, and thrills, though also with its share of drawbacks.
A Brief (Spoiler Free) Rundown
Tom Gray is one of the world’s top models—an effortless object of desire. Self-contained, elusive and always in control, he’s accustomed to living life entirely on his own terms. But when Tom comes under suspicion in the gory death of his employer, his world spirals into chaos.
Someone’s framing him. Someone’s stalking him. And as old secrets come to light, Tom finds his adversary always one step ahead.
Will Foster is the only man Tom trusts to help. But Tom brutally burned all bridges between them two years before, and Will paid a bitter price. If he wants to survive, Tom must prove his innocence to Will—and to the world.
The Good Stuff
As a thriller, it’s quite good. I’m not surprised by much, but there were several moments where I was caught by surprise with a reveal. I can’t say more without getting into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say, it caught me off guard more than once, and that’s truly high praise from me.
But does the ending resolution satisfy? That’s the big question with a mystery novel: is the revelation of the villain and how they accomplished their heinous crimes satisfying? For Object of Desire, the answer is yes, with caveats (that I’ll get to later). The revelation itself truly satisfies. The book twists and turns its way to the solution in a truly gratifying series of unmaskings. Just when you think you know, you don’t. A whole closet full of shoes drops over the course of it, and I loved reading it unfold. Whatever else I may say about Object of Desire and Maclean as an author, she writes one hell of a thrilling mystery story.
For a good thriller, you have to feel for the protagonist. You need to like them, worry for them, and always feel like the threat of danger is both real and unwelcome. Thankfully, Tom is likable. He’s appropriately flawed, by which I mean his flaws are appropriate to his job and the way those flaws work themselves out in his relationships never get in the way of relating to him. He’s a teensy bit of a stereotypical no-strings-attached model type, but his backstory provides enough context that it never feels flat or lazy. The push-pull of his dynamic with his ex, Will, and the two other men in his life—Nick and Pex—is believable. Plus, it’s great angst fodder, and I am a huge fan of angst.
In fact, I adore it. The slow burn romance/angst between Will and Tom in Object of Desire provides just enough release from the mystery while also furthering it. She really makes you want it, and it hurts so good. Maclean integrated the romantic subplots well into the overarching thriller plotline. When I’m reading the mystery, I want more romance, and when I’m the romance sections, I want more mystery. So, long story short, she did her job well intertwining them to where they mutually enhance each other.
All of the primary characters felt well fleshed out and round. All the men may be suspiciously gym-built, handsome, well-manicured, and sport full, lush, pouty lips, but who cares? That’s part of the men-loving-men (mlm) fantasy of it all. Every male protagonist—and some of the antagonists—are sexy and dtf, and that’s part of the aesthetic. It may not be my personal aesthetic, but this isn’t really for me, a queer woman. I can say, though, that for gay male readers, I can see how this would be super fucking hot to read.
I also really enjoy the casual gayness of the book. Almost all the primary characters are explicitly queer and quite a few of the secondary ones as well. Tom having a married woman-loving-woman (wlw) couple who live next door and help take care of his cat John utterly delighted me. Queer ladies and gents supporting each other ftw! Oh, and bisexual male love interest? Yes, please. I don’t know how normal it is for bi male character to exist in gay thrillers, but seeing one made me over the moon. Bi male rep is so rare, so good job Maclean.
Potential Drawbacks
Here come the chills; like the hot water tank running out of hot water right at the end of the shower, it diminishes, but doesn’t destroy my overall enjoyment of the book. I’ll start with the caveats to the resolution I mentioned at the outset. First, I didn’t particularly enjoy the use of a certain Hitchcock film as an inspiration, but that may be because I’ve seen it used multiple times in other crime shows. As I said, I’ve been pretty deeply immersed in crime procedurals and mystery novels for decades. This may be one of those your mileage may vary moments.
My biggest struggle with the resolution of the story followed a thread that I’d picked up on early on in the novel with regard to women and mental illness. Again, it’s kind of spoiler-y, but I’ll just say that when your cast of female characters is fairly small and three of them are mentally ill/unstable, obsessive, jealous, controlling women ruining queer men’s lives, I’m uncomfortable.
When it comes to the erotic sections, I’m not sure how to comment. As a queer woman, and one with highly specific taste in smut, I’m not the best person to judge. This isn’t smut that’s for me, after all. I actually hesitated in putting this under potential drawbacks because my quibble isn’t so much with the events as with the writing of them. I will say that the scenes felt well placed and paced and the emotional weightiness was on point.
However, some of the descriptions didn’t work for me. I’m not sure anybody’s skin can be described as “dusky rose gold,” for example—especially if the rest of their skin is olive toned. Some of the anatomical movements and mental reactions bordered on unpleasantly painful sounding. (Is having one’s balls turned inside out during an orgasm really a feeling that someone can have? And if so, is it desirable? To me that just sounds awful.) This might just be a me thing, because I prefer less…vivid descriptions of body parts and movement, even in my f/f erotica, so your mileage may vary.
I also wished that the author had cut her exposition and scene description in half. As more of a visual person, I find long, overly-complicated descriptions of clothing, rooms, and scenery distracting. Others might not find it so, so take that with a grain of salt. Still, the prose leaned toward purple at times, especially with the use of color words and adjectives/adverbs. Such of flowery descriptions purely for their own sake confused the tone and didn’t fit with Tom’s vocabulary. Thankfully, it wasn’t pervasive.
However, Maclean truly excels at dialogue. My favorite moments were where characters would just talk to each other, as she has a way with characterizing them through word choice. So, I wish we’d gotten more of use of dialogue and less use of over-long descriptions.
Final Score: 7/10
Object of Desire offers truly delightful thrills and an endlessly twisty mystery that will leave you on the edge of your seat. Despite suffering at times from purple prose and overly extended descriptions, the book balances romance and mystery well. And, while there may be unfortunate implications in the handling of certain female characters and mental illness, I found the rest of the characters to be delightfully flawed and complex. Overall, a good read and one that I feel comfortable recommending to my friends interested in this genre.
About the Author
Dal Maclean comes from Scotland. Her background is in journalism, and she has an undying passion for history, the more gossipy and scandalous the better. Dal has lived in Asia and worked all over the world, but home is now the UK. She dislikes the Tragic Gay trope, but loves imperfect characters and genuine emotional conflict in romantic fiction. As an author and a reader, she believes it’s worth a bit of work to reach a happy ending. Agatha Christie, English gardens, and ill-advised cocktails are three fatal weaknesses, though not usually at the same time.
Her first book, Bitter Legacy, was a 2017 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for best Gay Mystery and was chosen by the American Libraries Association for their 2018 Over The Rainbow Recommended Books List. You can find Dal Maclean on Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and her website.
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Object of Desire is now available for purchase on Amazon (US) and Smashwords.
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Note: The author of this review received a copy of the book in exchange for a free and honest review.