The Lemon Drop Kid, by Josh Lanyon

[Ulysses]

The Lemon Drop Kid
By Josh Lanyon
JustJoshin Publishing, 2024
Five stars

Reading this short novel reminded me how much I appreciate the quality of Josh Lanyon’s writing. At first seeming like a sort of classic m/m romance, “The Lemon Drop Kid” turns rather dark rather fast, and slithers around through several plot twists before its final payoff.

As the story opens, we meet Caz (Casper) Bredahl, twenty-something heir to the Bredahl Cookie and Cake fortune in the painfully quaint Wisconsin town of Little Copenhagen. Caz has had a crush on Raleigh Jackson, the slightly-older jock who became a policeman, since they were in school. The prologue sets up what looks to be a destined connection between the cookie prince and the 3rd-generation cop.

However, when the story really starts, we find Caz Bredahl just released from eleven months in the country jail for a murder he didn’t commit—having been put in jail by the man he loves, Raleigh Jackson. It is a bad start to a painful story, and it doesn’t get better.

That’s what makes this such a compelling book. It takes the Hallmark Holiday movie and turns it on its head, transforming it into a murder mystery that gets more sinister by the minute. Plus, the character of Casper Bredahl is beautifully rendered—his anguish, his anger, his hurt, his love for the man who betrayed him (if for the best of reasons). He is a smart, if slightly lazy guy, whose entire privileged, small-town world has been torn apart by a violent act for which he has been blamed.

I loved every minute of this, and look forward to more from one of my favorite authors.