Oddly sex-negative and misogynist with a misanthropic, assimilationist gay narrator. I thought the latter was setting the character up to be an unlikable, flawed hero who undergoes an arc as he is pulled into a murder investigation that he himself feels smugly distanced from due to class and the nature of the crime scenes: anonymous sex in the bathroom at a New Orleans gay bar.
No such luck.
Our villain protagonist Matty Sinclair started out his life as a prosecutor before 1980s' discriminatory employment policies diverted him to a day job in antique retail. He has a teenage house boy and a massive chip on his shoulder, which makes his successes as a Mickey Spillane-stype "special investigator" very hard to root for.
There are some viable targets in here: a "fag-baiting" member of New Orleans vice squad ends up being the third murder victim. A closeted congressman of the Senator Craig* persuasion breezes in and out in the latter half of the book, plainly terrified of being linked to the murders AND the gay scene -- but particularly the latter. Fennelly has no love for religious zealots or conservative Republicans. The humor is dark and the setting is engaging, as befitting the author's own history in the New Orleans bar scene. However, the murders are graphic (even by pulp standards) and the sex scenes fail the wet test for all genders.
* (20-year-old reference? It's a 40-year-old book, kids)
Submitted by Killian Pinks
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