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At the end of The Sugared Game (Will Darling #2) Phoebe broke off her engagement to Kim Secretan and went off to Paris to launch the very talented Maisie as a fashion designer. Three months later and Kim, no longer working for the shady government agency, is helping Will out in the bookshop. Things are quiet… until Kim's annoying, bad-tempered older brother, Chingford, commits murder at his exclusive London club… or does he? It looks like a cut and dried case, but Kim wants to find out the truth, not because he believes his ass of a brother is actually innocent, but because if he hangs, it leaves Kim heir to the title and estate and that is not a life he wants. He's never been able to please his overbearing father, the Marquess, and can't bear the thought of being bullied by the world's worst parent. Kim has made some bad decisions in his life, in particular refusing military service in the war. He is now living with the death of his younger brother who volunteered in his place. Can he overcome his past? Can Will and Kim have a future? The m/m sex is still explicit, but finally they are talking about feelings. This seems to be a trilogy, and, indeed it wraps up very well, but there could be more adventures. I, for one, would like to see another book in the series.
It's been a couple of months since the events at the end of Slippery Creatures. Will Darling, war survivor and bookseller, hasn't seen Kim Secretan in all that time and doesn't expect to see him again. Will takes his friend, Maisie, dancing to a popular but shady nightclub (this is 1920s London) and things start to get complicated. The nightclub is the base for a bunch of crooks, and it's connected to Zodiac, the secret criminal network that caused Will and Kim so many problems in the first book. Then, surprise, surprise, Kim turns up and things go from bad to worse, A 
Post 1918, England is not a land fit for heroes as Will Darling, ex-soldier, sometime trench raider, and all-round handy man with a blade and his fists, discovers to his cost. Jobs are scarce, money dwindling, and it's only when he's down to rationing himself to one meal a day that he contacts his estranged uncle and is welcomed to a job in his uncle's antiquarian and second hand book shop. A few months later the uncle dies and Will inherits the building and the business, and counts himself lucky – until a thug makes it obvious that something precious is hidden in the shop and Will must give it up. It's a pity Will hasn't a clue what he's talking about. Enter Kim Secretan, a bit upper crust, but easy to talk to and easy to like. More than like if Will is honest. First a criminal gang and then chaps from the War Office threaten consequences, and Will and Kim (who turns out to be Lord Arthur, second son of a marquess, a disgraced aristo mired in lies) are thrown into an adventure involving spies, a criminal gang, a super-secret government department, kidnapping, violence and a web of lies, not all of them from the bad guys. It seems that Will has something that could be very dangerous. If he finds it, does he give it to the criminals or the War Office? Or might he find a third way? 
