I found their day at the zoo to be one of the more tender moments of the book, as the two men, on neutral turf and off the clock, conversed freely and honestly, providing each other with a synopsis of their life story – and yes, Mac’s sexuality was still unknown to Hart at this time. There was one especially revealing event in the story – the day Mac and Hart ran into each other at the zoo, each accompanied by a kid. In fact, it begins to appear that Mac is never going to let Hart know that he is also gay and attracted to Hart. The author reveals the inner-workings of the characters slowly, allowing us to get to really know the them. The relationship between the two men unfolds a little at a time with Hart being angry with himself for lusting after a straight cop and Mac being unable to let Hart know that his advances are not unwelcome, as he stay firm in his conviction that he will remain in the closet. This was not the case here – the author expertly unfurled information only as we needed it. Many authors tend to do a “data dump” when describing crime and police procedures. I also found the police procedural scenes to be well-done, thorough and believable. We also learn that he is gay but is so deeply in the closet that he doesn’t ever acknowledge Hart’s flirting – or his growing own attraction to the young teacher. The daugher is being raised by his religious crackpot of a cousin, who won’t allow Mac in her house because she believes that Mac and his former wife (now deceased) had the child out of wedlock. We learn as the novel progresses that Mac has had a difficult background – he is a widower and the legal father of a daughter who is not his. While Tony is young, a tad twink-ish, opinionated, out & proud and somewhat sarcastic, Mac is masculine, pushing 40, gruff, by-the-book, and straight (or so it seems initially). He and Tony appear to be complete opposites. Homicide detective Jared MacLean – who goes by Mac – arrives on the scene. Panicked, Tony leaves the body in the elevator and calls the police from his classroom. It’s then that Tony notices the knife sticking in Westin’s chest.

As soon as the elevator door opens, one of his colleagues, Brian Weston, stumbles into him and drops to the floor. The novel opens one evening at Roosevelt High School as young teacher Tony Hart prepares to leave for the night. Right from the get-go, this adrenaline-filled story hits the ground running. I had no idea what the book was about but it didn’t take long to figure out that it was a mystery/detective novel because it… Starts Out With a Body I’ve read two other books of hers: Sole Support and Into Deep Waters, both of which I really enjoyed. I’ve been meaning to read the the Life Lessons series by Kaje Harper for awhile now but have not as of yet gotten around to it so I was overjoyed when I noticed that my Goodreads book club was reading the first book in the series, Life Lessons in March.

Life Lessons by Kaje Harper