Richard Stevenson: Red White Black and Blue (XII)

A Donald Strachey Mystery. Vol.12. USA 2011, 225 pp., brochure, € 14.95
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
MLR Press - Donald Strachey 12
In an election year, private investigator Donald Strachey finds himself in the unlikely role of a political operative. Rumors about the Tea Party's opportunistic gubernatorial candidate, Kenyon Louderbush, paint him as an unfaithful, callous exploiter of young men ... young men that he puts into the hospital ... or perhaps the morgue. Don smells truth in those rumors. But, he's confounded by a shadowy conspiracy, witnesses' fear and a grieving family appallingly willing to give up on justice for a brutalized son and brother. In the 12th installation of the Donald Strachey mystery series, author Stevenson takes witty aim at the polarization, dissembling and double-dealing of American politics. It's a story that leaves his hero, Don Strachey, tarnished and bruised.

Richard Stevenson: Cockeyed

A Donald Strachey Mystery, Vol.11. USA 2010, 217 pp., brochure, € 12.99
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When Hunny »You go, girl!« Van Horn, Albany's most flaming working-class flamer, wins the state lottery's first billion-dollar payout, his chaotic life gets even messier. He wasn't fitting into the »norm« of the gay community before that, and he doesn't afterwards. And, now, he becomes the target of various shady characters from his past, as well as right wing fanatics seeking to cast the LGBT community in a negative light. It's Private Investigator Donald Strachey who's brought in to deal with the skeletons tumbling out of Hunny's non-closet, some violent. The eleventh Strachey novel is part mystery, part screwball comedy, and entirely serious in its exploration of multiple ways of being gay in America.

Richard Stevenson: Third Man Out

USA 2007, 175 pp., brochure, € 9.20
Kostenloser Versand ab 20 Euro Bestellwert.
When gay activist John Rutka engineers his own endangerment to generate sympathy and business for his »outing« publication, it backfires. After an attempt is made on his life, Queer Nation activist John Rutka asks tough-as-nails gay private detective Don Strachey to provide him with protection. But why does someone want to kill him? Maybe because the activist's efforts at outing closeted gay homophobes have earned him plenty of enemies who want to see him dead. Strachey (quickly quits bodyguarding him, and one of Rutka's many enemies takes the opportunity to kidnap him and burn him so badly that it takes forensic dentistry to identify the body. Which closeted gay wanted to prevent his own homosexuality from being exposed? Rutka's files lead to a TV newscaster, and a politician's aide. Meanwhile, Strachey and boyfriend Tim make regular hospital visits to a comatose AIDS friend, grapple with the concept of assisted-death, and Strachey finally connects a VIP with Rutka's files involving pedophilia, coincidences par excellence, and impropriety from several clerics.