Grime and Punishment, By Z.A. Maxfield

**This book contains M/M romance**

The Brothers Grime is Jack Masterson’s way of helping people in crisis after disability ends his career as a firefighter. Jack’s people get to a scene long after the physical trauma ends. They don’t solve crime or rescue the victims. They help people move on. The new job is all Jack wants or needs, until he gets the call about old flame Nick Foasberg’s suicide.

 Ryan Halloran’s cousin Nick has been on a downhill slide for a long time. Despite that, Ryan does everything he knows to help. Ryan only understands part of what happened between Nick and Jack in high school, but after Nick’s suicide, Ryan agrees both he and Jack need closure. They work together to clean the scene and despite the situation, heat flares between them.

 Jack is keeping a painful secret and fighting his attraction Nick’s look-alike cousin, Ryan. Ryan calls himself a magnet for lost causes and worries Jack might be the next in a long line of losers. Despite his misgivings, despite the past and the mistakes they’ve both made, Jack gives Ryan something to look forward to, and Ryan gives Jack a reason to stop looking back, in Grime And Punishment.

                This book had an interesting start to say the least, and once I started it, I couldn’t seem to put it down.  While the job that Jack had, being a crime scene cleaner, was… gruesome at best it was great that there wasn’t a lot of focus on that in this book.  Yes they do talk about a crime scene, but Z.A. didn’t go overboard with the details.  The story more focused upon the relationship that was forming between Jack and Ryan.

                While Jack’s character was well developed, I felt like Ryan’s could have been more filled out, in my opinion.  You learn a lot about Jack, but not that much about Ryan during the course of the book.  You know he has a good heart and he is a sucker for the helpless, but besides that there really isn’t a lot you learn.

                The secondary characters were well written and it does leave more up for grabs in future books.  I think that Z.A. wrote this keeping in mind that they wanted to do the series.  But it wasn’t done in a way that there were a bunch of unanswered questions you were left wondering about.  It just leaves you wanting for more.

                I would recommend this book to friends of mine who are looking for a good read and don’t mind spending such an amount of money on a first book in the series.

This book is currently $5.99 US Dollars on Amazon.

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