Review - The Evening Wolves by Gregory Ashe

It’s been months since the case revolving around the Cottonmouth Club went cold. Emery and his husband John-Henry continue to chase leads, but every one of them ends up being a dead end, sometimes literally. Summer has given way to autumn and then winter. It’s almost Christmas when John-Henry is arrested and accused of one of the worst crimes. Emery and all his friends know the chief of police is being framed, and they are sure it has to do with the investigation of the Cottonmouth Club, but can they prove it? Perhaps just as importantly, even if the charges are false, will things ever be the same again?

The Iron on Iron series concludes with a gut-wrenching installment focusing on Police Chief John-Henry and his husband Emery. While this story is told from two new points of view, all the other couples from the first three books play active roles in this story. As in the other books, it can be hard keeping track of all the characters, and a few new ones get thrown in, like we should know them even though they’ve never been mentioned before.

John-Henry is at the very center of this story. He was the town’s golden boy. High school football star. The man every girl wanted. The son of the mayor, who made sure the boy never suffered the consequences of any bad decisions he made. John-Henry has tried to put all that behind him and be the man he wants to be rather than the one everyone else expects. He married Emery, the boy he bullied in school because the out and proud student made him feel things he wasn’t supposed to. It seems like all that is coming back to haunt him now, and it’s a lot to process.

Emery comes across as over-protective to a fault, but as we learn more about him, it starts to make sense. It even turns out to be something that Emery shouldn’t let people talk him out of doing. Of course, Emery’s greatest challenge in this story is how to support his husband, John-Henry. It’s hard to know what to do, since the man himself doesn’t know how to deal with the situation.

“The Evening Wolves” is available from Smashwords or Amazon (commissionable link).