Quick Take
- Narration: Chris Patton delivers a performance that reviewers consistently single out as the element that elevates the entire Adrien English series in audio form; his Adrien is wry, warm, and real.
- Themes: grief and recovery, love complicated by history, identity and coming out later in life
- Mood: Emotionally charged and bittersweet, with mystery woven through
- Verdict: A series finale that earns its emotional weight, and a narration that will leave you sitting in silence for a few minutes after the last chapter.
I finished The Dark Tide late on a Thursday evening, sitting in the dark, genuinely not ready to move on. That is the particular quality of a series finale that works: it does not just resolve plot, it completes relationships you have been living alongside long enough that closure feels like a real loss. Josh Lanyon’s Adrien English Mysteries have been running since 2000, and this fifth and final installment is the one long-time readers have been waiting for and slightly dreading.
To come to this book cold would be a mistake. The Dark Tide is book five of the Adrien English Mysteries, and it opens almost immediately after the events of book four, with Adrien still recovering from heart surgery. If you are unfamiliar with the series, the short version is this: Adrien English is a bookseller and mystery author in Los Angeles whose life has an inconvenient tendency to generate real murders. His long-running and genuinely complicated relationship with Jake Riordan, a detective who spent most of the series in the closet, is the emotional spine of the entire sequence. By the time of this book, Jake is out, divorced, and working as a private investigator. What remains between them is the accumulated weight of all the years they could not acknowledge each other properly.
A Skeleton in the Renovation Wall
The mystery structure here is classic Lanyon: a half-century-old skeleton tumbles out of a wall during renovations at the Cloak and Dagger Bookstore, and Adrien hires Jake to look into it. The case itself is engaging, involving a tangle of old secrets that connect to Adrien’s own past in unexpected ways. Lanyon is good at constructing puzzles that feel genuinely surprising without requiring you to accept implausible coincidences, and this one has a satisfying shape. But the mystery is, as in all the Adrien English books, a vehicle for something else: the slow reckoning between two people who have spent years at cross-purposes.
The former partners who appear in this book, including Guy and Mel, raise the stakes of the central relationship in ways that feel earned rather than manufactured. Lanyon knows these characters too well to use them cheaply. The attempt to break into Adrien’s apartment that opens the investigation is handled with the series’ characteristic balance of menace and dry humor, which is the right register for a protagonist who narrates danger as though it is an inconvenience he has learned to tolerate.
Why the Audio Version Changes Everything
Multiple reviewers specifically note that the audio format elevates this series. One described feeling almost mournful at the end, as if losing good friends. That response is, in significant part, a tribute to Chris Patton’s narration, which has been the consistent voice of Adrien across the entire run. Patton’s Adrien is dry, slightly self-deprecating, observant, and occasionally reckless in ways that feel authentic rather than performed. He calibrates the emotional register precisely: the lighter scenes have real wit, and the harder scenes do not tip into melodrama.
What is notable about Patton’s performance in this final book specifically is how much the relationship between Adrien and Jake has accumulated in his reading. By book five, he does not need to explain who these people are to each other. It is in the silences and the flat deliveries and the moments where Adrien says something careful because he knows Jake cannot yet handle the direct version. That kind of layered characterization in audio requires a narrator who has been paying attention across multiple books, and Patton has clearly done that work. His performance here is arguably the most precise of the series because the emotional register has become the most complex.
What Lanyon Gets Right About Endings
The central question that hovers over the entire series is whether Jake and Adrien can actually get to a place where they are on the same page at the same time. Lanyon delays this resolution ruthlessly across five books, which is either frustrating or exactly right depending on your tolerance for romantic tension. By this final installment, the delay has earned its payoff. The ending lands because Lanyon has not softened the obstacles or tidied Jake into easy redemption. His growth is genuine but not miraculous, and Adrien’s forgiveness, when it comes, is specific rather than general.
One reviewer called it an ending that What.An.Ending, which, grammatically chaotic as that is, captures the feeling correctly. Another described the series as showing how M/M mystery fiction should be done: believable characters, mystery and suspense, and an occasional hot sex scene, none of it gratuitous, all of it serving the larger story. That description of the series as a whole applies with particular force to this final book, where every element that Lanyon has been developing for years is called on to perform.
Who This Book Is and Is Not For
If you have been following the series and have listened to the previous four books with Chris Patton narrating, this is an essential conclusion. If you are new to Adrien English, start with the first book rather than this one: the emotional impact of the finale depends entirely on the accumulated history. Lanyon is widely considered the standard-setter in the M/M mystery genre, and the Adrien English series is the work most frequently cited as the reason why. This final entry confirms that reputation. For readers of the genre broadly, this is the series that demonstrates what M/M mystery fiction can accomplish when given the full weight of five long books.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to listen to the previous four Adrien English audiobooks before starting The Dark Tide?
Yes, very much so. The Dark Tide opens almost immediately after the events of book four and assumes familiarity with Adrien’s history, his relationships with Jake, Guy, and Mel, and the emotional arc of the series. Starting here would mean missing most of what makes the ending meaningful.
Is Chris Patton the narrator for all five Adrien English audiobooks?
Yes, Patton narrates the full series, which is part of why the audio versions work as well as they do. Having a consistent narrator across all five books means the character voices and emotional register have genuine continuity, and his performance in The Dark Tide specifically benefits from that accumulated history.
How does the mystery plot in The Dark Tide compare to earlier entries in the series?
The mystery involves a fifty-year-old skeleton discovered in a wall during bookstore renovations, with secrets that connect to Adrien’s own past. It is a solid puzzle with genuine surprises, but as with all the Adrien English books, the emotional relationship between Adrien and Jake is the primary engine. Readers who want pure mystery plotting first will find the balance tips toward the romantic relationship in this final installment.
Does the book resolve the Jake and Adrien relationship definitively?
Yes. This is explicitly the final volume in the series, and Lanyon does not leave the central relationship open-ended. The resolution is earned and specific rather than tidy, and multiple reviewers have described it as emotionally intense. Be prepared for a few quiet minutes after the last chapter ends.
