Sex can be a risky business when it becomes a way to earn a living, and as this story shows, there is more than one reason things can go wrong. ‘A Dangerous Game’ sneaked up on me with its slow and relatively innocuous start into what I believed to be a young man’s slide into a life he never wanted. It is that, showing Wren’s desperation and lack of options as he begins to consider becoming an escort, but then the hints accumulate and it slowly changes into a murder mystery. The plot is put together so well that it provided me with more than one suspect, a couple of dead ends, and a final resolution that did not emerge as a possibility until the last few pages. Masterful!

Wren is a troubled young man. He’s never had an easy life, but his mother and he always managed. Now, at twenty-three, he has been fired from a customer service job he liked, and has no idea what to do next. On top of everything else, he loses his wallet (or so he thinks), and Dave, a total stranger, offers him a deal that seems too good to be true. And all Wren has to do is sell his body. His struggle as he thinks through the offer, looks at the details, and falls in love with another escort – Rufus, the guy who is supposed to mentor him and who is, according to the man who runs the agency, totally off limits.

Rufus has some dark secrets, but Dave, the agency’s owner, is into even darker “games” and threatens everyone’s safety and some guys’ lives with his activities. With sex as a business, greed as a motivator, and a lack of morals, there is nothing much that can stop Dave. Except then it turns out there is someone with even fewer scruples, escorts begin to die, and Wren and Rufus are the only ones who stand a chance to figure it out and stop more murders from happening.

If you like stories about the darker side of human nature, if you want to know more about two young men in a seemingly hopeless situation and how they turn it around, and if you’re looking for a suspenseful read that is well written, enthralling, and a character study all in one, then you will probably like this novel. It is not your average murder mystery in the least, but no less captivating.


NOTE: This book was provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews. ( )