Lessons for Sleeping Dogs

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. I suspect there are some people who read the Cambridge Fellows books for the mysteries and others who read them for the relationship between the outgoing Jonty Stewart and the more reserved Orlando Coppersmith. For mystery buffs, Lessons for Sleeping Dogs doesn't disappoint, with the classic conundrum of two dead men in a locked room, with one of the victims' relatives contesting the official verdict of a mercy killing followed by suicide. Solving the mystery involves code breaking, bad sonnets and in a strange way, Peter Pan.

For relationship fans, this installment is a bit meh. I started this series with Lessons in Love, hoping to find a satisfying M/M historical series similar to the works of Jordan L. Hawk (without the sorcery) or Tamara Allen. I am not a mystery fan; I'm more interested in the relationship between the two men, which has survived Orlando's initial complete cluelessness about love and sex, Jonty's temptation to stray, and of course the Great War, which almost separated the two forever. Sleeping Dogs, much like Survivors, shows Jonty and Orlando still recovering from the war but basically on even footing with each other. While it's always entertaining to see Orlando joke about the ways he'd like to murder his beloved and to have Jonty call his true love “a big daft pudding,” there's nothing propelling their relationship forward anymore. Not that I want any artificial obstacles placed in their way (the amnesia plot from Discovery was almost unforgivable), but the relationship has become the very definition of “cozy,” like a comfortable old slipper.

After 12 books I can still be entertained by finding unfamiliar British words (what the heck is a “tantalus?”), or by re-visiting old friends including Jonty's sister Lavinia and their Cambridge ally Ariadne Sheridan. But there's nothing in the series at this point that makes me urgently want to seek out the next volume.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.