Vermilion

by Nathan Aldyne

Paperback, 1980

Status

Available

Call number

PS3551 .L346 V47 1980

Publication

Avon (1980), Edition: First Printing, 192 pages

Description

Two misfit sleuths search for a street hustler's killer in this mystery series debut first published in 1980 and set in Boston's gay scene. Daniel Valentine is a gay bartender and former social worker. Clarisse Lovelace is his straight pal who works in real estate. They make an unconventional investigative duo--but sometimes unconventional is exactly what's called for. When Billy Golacinsky, a teenage street hustler, is found dead on the lawn of a homophobic lawmaker, everyone wants the case swept under the rug. Everyone except Valentine and Lovelace. Now they're combing through Boston's gay scene--from bars to bath houses--in a time before AIDS, yet full of other dangers.

User reviews

LibraryThing member ffortsa
Ouch. Sometimes the beginning of a series isn't worth stretching for. I had read the fourth (and last) in this series and liked it well enough. Two amateur sleuths in Boston in the 1980s were entertaining, so I thought I'd see how the series started. My advice - don't. Overwritten, oversexed,
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over-stereotyped. As someone, I think Suzanne, says, a tree died for this.
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LibraryThing member ChrisWeir
Murder mystery in which a gay hustler is killed in Boston. The plot involves a property broker and a gay bartender who are best friends who are investigating the murder. The bartender and some others in the gay business community are getting leaned on by a local cop. Is so so as far a story goes.
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It truly is a mystery til near the end of the book as to whom committed the murder with various clues pointing us in different directions. Which ultimately turn out to be red herrings. Some of the characters lean a bit too much on stereotypes, the aging queen who sings in a piano bar, the clones, promiscuous sex that seems to have been more of the time then now. But that being said that it relies on stereotypes it does have a cast of characters, the aging lounge singer, a dominatrix that's always stoned, the promiscuous bartender, the "overworked" property broker. I read this series a number of years ago and am re-reading now. We'll have to see how the rest of the series holds up.
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Language

Original publication date

1980

ISBN

0380765969 / 9780380765966
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