I’ve run out of words to say how excited and grateful that my novel, Speakers of the Dead, is a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in the gay mystery category. And tonight, finally, the awards ceremony is here.
One benefit to being a finalist has been to see my work being mentioned in the same breath with the work of other writers. As the ceremony approaches, I wanted to feature their work here. The other nominees for the gay mystery category are:
Bitter Legacy by Dal Maclean, Blind Eye Books
Detective Sergeant James Henderson’s remarkable gut instincts have put him on a three-year fast track to becoming an inspector. But the advancement of his career has come at a cost. Gay, posh and eager to prove himself in the Metropolitan Police, James has allowed himself few chances for romance.
But when the murder of barrister Maria Curzon-Whyte lands in his lap, all that changes. His investigation leads him to a circle of irresistibly charming men. And though he knows better, James finds himself enticed into their company.
Soon his desire for photographer Ben Morgan challenges him to find a way into the other man’s lifestyle of one-night stands and carefree promiscuity. At the same time his single murder case multiplies into a cruel pattern of violence and depravity.
But as the bodies pile up and shocking secrets come to light, James finds both his tumultuous private life and coveted career threatened by a bitter legacy.
Homo Superiors by L. A. Fields, Lethe Press
Two college seniors: Noah, frail like the hollow-boned birds he enjoys watching, caged by his intellect, and by his sense that the only boy as smart as himself is his best friend; Ray who has spent years aping leading men so that his every gesture is suave, but who has become bored with petty cheats and tricks, and now, during summer break in Chicago, needs something momentous to occupy himself.
Noah’s text says, I’ve found some candidates for murder. Ray chuckles and knows that Noah sent the message to cheer him. Both boys realize they stand apart from others their age. One lacks social graces, the other has perfected being charming. Both are too willing to embark on a true challenge of their superiority but neither realizes what such a crime will do because no matter how they see themselves, how they need one another, they still possess the same emotions of H. sapiens.
Lay Your Sleeping Head by Michael Nava, Korima Press
Thirty years ago, The Little Death introduced Henry Rios, a gay, Latino criminal defense lawyer who became the central figure in a celebrated seven novel series.
In a brilliant reimagination of The Little Death, Lay Your Sleeping Head retains all the complexity and elegance of the plot of the original novel but deepens the themes of personal alienation and erotic obsession that both honored the traditions of the American crime novel and turned them on their head.
Henry Rios, a gifted and humane lawyer driven to drink by professional failure and personal demons, meets a charming junky struggling to stay clean. He tells Rios an improbable tale of long-ago murders in his wealthy family. Rios is skeptical, but the erotic spark between them ignites an obsessive affair that ends only when the man’s body is discovered with a needle in his arm on the campus of a great California university.
Rios refuses to believe his lover’s death was an accidental overdose. His hunt for the killer takes him down San Francisco’s mean streets and into Nob Hill mansions where he uncovers the secrets behind a legendary California fortune and the reason the man he loved had to die.
Nights in Berlin by Janice Law, MysteriousPress.com /Open Road Integrated Media
Francis Bacon has never cared much for country living, so he is overjoyed when his father sends him to Berlin as punishment for his not-so-innocent flirtations with the other boys at school. With afternoons at the cinema, dinner at the Hotel Adlon, and nights at the most outrageous cabarets in Germany—and in his uncle Lastings’s bed—he’ll fit right in.
The Great War having ended over a decade ago, and its resulting economic turmoil in the past, Germany is enjoying the “Golden Twenties”—a time of healthy fiscal growth, and creative and sexual resurgence, centered in Berlin. Yet dark clouds are gathering as Hitler consolidates power within the Nazi Party and brownshirts march through the streets.
As tensions rise, Francis finds his uncle Lastings busy welcoming countless men into his hotel room—some invited for pleasure, others to be recruited for the fight against Bolshevism. But when the Nazis send Lastings fleeing for his life, Francis is left alone, penniless, and hunted, with only his keen sense of hedonism to distract him from a city that gets more menacing every night.
Nights in Berlin is the 4th book in the Francis Bacon Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
