I loved Lavender House and I love Bell in the Fog even more. Lev AC Rosen is a brilliant writer and has captured the world of 1950s America from a queer lens with such vivid detail and truth. While this one is shorter, it is no less gripping and I need to gush about it before my head explodes.

San Francisco, 1952. Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has started a new life for himself as a private detective―but his business hasn’t exactly taken off. It turns out that word spreads fast when you have a bad reputation, and no one in the queer community trusts him enough to ask an ex-cop for help. When James, an old flame from the war who had mysteriously disappeared, arrives in his offices above the Ruby, Andy wants to kick him out. But the job seems to be a simple case of blackmail, and Andy’s debts are piling up. He agrees to investigate, despite everything it stirs up. The case will take him back to the shadowy, closeted world of the Navy, and then out into the gay bars of the city, where the past rises up to meet him, like the swell of the ocean under a warship. Missing people, violent strangers, and scandalous photos that could destroy lives are a whirlpool around him, and Andy better make sense of it all before someone pulls him under for good.

Andy as a character is so complex and his internal conflicts with himself and his past, a past confronting him directly in this instalment, make reading this novel so thrilling and easy. There are so many things I can see in his history and his reaction to who he was and who he is now that I feel such strong connection to. He is a character who is flawed but is trying to do the right thing by those around him, by his community, and by himself. He wasn’t to be different from his past. He wants to be better. This case directly contests his true wants and what he knows of habit and it’s so fascinating seeing the path he goes down. I say fascinating, but it’s truly a harsh reality that many must face in order to tear themselves from their past and work on making themselves a present and a future they want.

The imagery and life of this novel draw you in and make you a part of the clubs and backstage as it were, seeing both sides of life. Not only that, must the numerous police raids are a great reminder that even in this fiction the attitudes and actions towards queer men, women and everyone in between back in those days was more than horrendous. The number of times the peace was broken in these clubs (I promise, there is more than just clubs in this one) and a sense of security and belonging was shattered breaks my heart.

I love that we get some new faces that are familiar to Andy and we also have more interaction between Andy and the main crew at Ruby’s. I loved the personalities of the family, but queer characters with less power and wealth working out how to live their life without getting on the wrong side of the law are a lot more relatable to me, another reason why this book is my preferred pick so far. Lee is an angel and Gene has my approval every day of the week.

The topic of the mystery in The Bell in the Fog is so interesting and I was engrossed the from cover to cover. I love blackmail and extortion in my adult crime fiction or historical fiction, so to have such an element of intrigue brought into this historical fiction mystery had me invested from the start. It took only a few chapters to be looped in on such a wild ride and I need to go again.

I cannot wait for the third instalment in this incredible series. You can bet it’s getting added to my library requests as soon as it pops up in the system. I highly recommend The Bell in the Fog to fans of adult crime and historical fiction mysteries – you will not be disappointed!