Peacemaker is the first book in the Sharps & Springfield series of historical paranormals set in the US near the end of the nineteenth century.  It boasts an interesting central mystery and a well-developed setting, but the characters are barely two-dimensional and the romance is pretty much non-existent. The book is also labelled as ‘steampunk’, but I didn’t read a single thing that was remotely steampunk-y, so why this series has been labelled that way is a complete mystery to me.

The story opens with Owen Sharps, a meduim with the Supernatural Secret Service, travelling to St. Louis to take up his latest assignment. The train journey is made more pleasant when a very handsome man enters the carriage and takes the seat across from him. Owen has to stop himself drooling and immediately chubs up. (*eyeroll*. It’s page four.) Trying hard not to think about things he shouldn’t be thinking about, Owen chats with the mystery man chat for a bit about his book – he’s reading Dracula – and other things in general; they share a convivial meal and evening, and settle in for the night, but don’t share names.

When the men alight, they realise that not only are they headed in the same direction, they’re actually going to be partnered together at the St. Louis Office of the Supernatural Secret Service. Like Owen, Calvin Springfield had been in the army prior to joining the service and, also like Owen – and most of the others in the SSS – he has a degree of paranormal ability (in his case, psychometry). (Owen is pleased to find out he’s not a mind-reader given all the lustful thoughts he’s been having!) Arrived at the St. Louis office, Owen and Calvin learn that they’ve been brought in following the disappearance of two agents who were investigating several gruesome murders that have taken place over the past few months. The two men vanished without trace, and Owen and Calvin are to take over the investigation into the murders while also trying to find out what happened to them.

The fairly short list of main suspects consists of a few local big-wigs, but the prime suspect is one Leland Aiken, a would-be railroad baron who also happens to be a vampire. There’s nothing tangible – so far – to connect him either to the murders or the disappearance of the two agents – he’s too smart to do any dirty work himself and has a number of very powerful friends including, they suspect, the local chief of police. Getting to the bottom of this mystery is going to be difficult and dangerous – vampires, evil witches, necromancers, shape-shifters, hell-hounds and dark spirits are only some of the things our heroes are going to have to face down if they’re going to uncover the truth and make it out alive.

The mystery element in this story works reasonably well, although it’s not especially deep or intricate, and clues and questions are found and answered rather too easily. Owen and Calvin are ably assisted by their valet-cum-general factotum, a retired agent called Winston, a skilled witch who ‘keeps house’ for the men on their Pulman car accomodation, and by two friends, Ida, a hard-nosed reporter and Louisa, a Pinkerton working undercover as a showgirl. (It’s always nice to see some kickass women in an m/m book).

The setting is also nicely done; the author has clearly done her homework about late nineteenth century St. Louis, talking about how the city is still trying to find its footing post-war, and including so many of the hallmarks of the period, from showgirls to railroads, Pinkertons to corrupt officials. She also acknowledges the dangers of being queer at this time and takes care to use period-appropriate language to describe gay men (“molly” and “nancy” are probably the least offensive terms.) There’s a wide variety of paranormal entities included, too, although it isn’t clear whether the general populace knows about the paranormal world or not, which is a bit of a hole in the worldbuilding. And as I said at the beginning of this review, NONE of this is remotely steampunk-y, so that label is very misleading.

Where the book really falls down is in the characterisation of the leads, which is paper thin, and the romance, which is based entirely on insta-lust. These two thirty-something former soldiers are prone to internal monologuing as a way of info dumping, and they moon over each other like a teenaged girl over Justin Bieber (or whoever the hell is the current crush du jour). They’ve known each other two days, maybe three. THREE. DAYS. Which they’ve spent mostly apart following separate leads, and they’re thinking about setting up house together and falling in love and forever – it’s just ridiculous. This is a series, so why do the leads have to fall in love in book one? If the author wants to have them falling into bed, okay – it’s fairly common in m/m series for the leads to hook up in the first book, but not catch feelings until later on – but I absolutely did not buy these guys to falling in love in less than a week. In addition, they nave no chemistry, and because we know so little about them – and they know so little about each other – it’s impossible to understand what they see in each other apart from their external hotness.

Peacemaker isn’t a terrible book, it’s just not as good as it could have been – or as good as I hoped it would be. The mystery isn’t bad – I think the storyline is going to run throughout the series – there are some very well-written set pieces and I liked the secondary cast, but the leads are bland and the romance is sorely lacking. I’m not sufficiently invested in anything here to want to continue with the series.