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Walking Wounded by Lee Rowan

In Chapter 1, John gets a phone call; it's Kevin, a former lover, who is passing through Portsmouth, England and wonders if he can drop by.  It sounds like a casual request, but we readers pick up many subtle clues in the narrative that poor John is in a bad point in his life, and Kevin's voice is a beacon of salvation. Trying not to sound too desperate, John tells Kevin to come over.

Swiftly, we get the brushstrokes of their past filled in:  they first met seven years ago in an officers' training class in the British army.  They sat next to one another in the alphabetically seated classrooms.  They found themselves instantly attracted to one another and didn't waste much time dancing around the are-you-gay question. Soon they moved in together. John, a bookworm, has no living relatives. Kevin, an action-oriented guy, has a big family including his father, a brigadier general.

But the two lovers' different viewpoints on military service ended up sweeping them apart. John followed his humanitarian conscience to a disastrous mission as a "peacekeeper" in Bosnia.  Forbidden to use force to protect civilians from everyday atrocities, John eventually had a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide, and got discharged on medical leave. Now he's recuperating and contemplating a career as a mental-health counselor.

Kevin, on the other hand, joined the SAS.  (For Americans not in the know, the Special Air Service is the British version of our U.S. Army Special Forces.)  He went off to serve in some dangerous covert operations in the Middle East.  Then, after a complicated mission gone awry, the army unjustly forced him to take the blame and resign his commission. Now he's back in England, looking up his old boyfriend John.

Can these two rebuild their lives together?  They are still deeply in love with each other.  Also, as combat veterans, they can understand each other's psychological problems better than could the average civilian.  Soon they are looking for a new place to live with enough room for both of them. But then a dangerous man from Kevin's highly-classified past starts stalking them.  What can they do to defend their potential future together?

Walking Wounded is not up to the standards set by the author's Age-of-Sail novels Ransom and Winds of Change, but that would be asking a lot.  Here at Obsidianbookshelf.com, I found that Walking Wounded drifts until its somewhat rushed ending with no real plot momentum:  we get a few sex scenes; dialogue (or monologue from history-buff John who has a tendency to lecture); a subplot about adopting some adorable kittens; and another subplot about the lovable lesbians who want to have our heroes' babies. Walking Wounded details how the life of John and Kevin comes together, but lacks any sense of urgency until a villain from Kevin's past emerges towards the end. However, the cover art is beautiful!

Relevant Links:  (titles without links will be reviewed soon) Contemporary Fiction Ransom by Lee Rowan Winds of Change by Lee Rowan Which One of Two Lovers Did I Like Best and Why? Walking Wounded is available at Amazon:   Walking Wounded

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