Third Man Out: A Donald Strachey Mystery (Stonewall Inn Mystery)

Rating:
Summary: A Gay Mystery worth reading!
Review: I've often looked for a gay murder mystery who done it. Finally I found something worth reading. It's not a dumbed down novel at all. It's full of plots twists and turns with characters who you really get to know. It's nice to see characters interacting with one another who are gay even if they do go for blackmale and the shady side of life sometime...okay most of the time. Very few women mentioned in the book, and I give it four stars because I was able to figure out who did it close to the end of the book and because the ending left me a bit speechless and upset.

Rating:
Summary: A Gay Mystery worth reading!
Review: I've often looked for a gay murder mystery who done it. Finally I found something worth reading. It's not a dumbed down novel at all. It's full of plots twists and turns with characters who you really get to know. It's nice to see characters interacting with one another who are gay even if they do go for blackmale and the shady side of life sometime...okay most of the time. Very few women mentioned in the book, and I give it four stars because I was able to figure out who did it close to the end of the book and because the ending left me a bit speechless and upset.

Rating:
Summary: "OUT, DAMNED SPOT! OUT, I SAY!"
Review: In THIRD MAN OUT, the fourth Donald Strachey caper, Stevenson deals with the touchy issue of the forced 'outing' of gays (and their little dogs too) by other gays. Reluctantly, P.I. Strachey agrees to act as body guard to Queer Nation activist John Rutka, who has inspired mucho death threats following a conscienceless campaign of outings. Strachey gets disgusted, quits, and somebody burns Rutka to a crisp.

As usual Stevenson agilely juggles a variety of themes: hypocrisy within the Catholic church, euthanasia, the AIDS crisis, the right to privacy of public figures. These are topics addressed by many gay mystery writers with varying degrees of insight and sensitivity. Stevenson, as ever, manages to be funny and rational at the same time.

The only thing that keeps this entry in the Strachey sweepstakes from being an across the board winner, is my own personal predilection for more pages devoted to the Strachey-Callahan partnership. Don and Timmy remain (for me) the most fascinating couple in gay mysterydom (second only to the enigma of Dave Brandstetter and his long-dead Rod Fleming). They represent (as Strachey himself once facetiously put it) "two healthy, relaxed gay men more or less at peace with themselves and each other, secure in their loving relationship and in the knowledge that its evident riches were a goal nearly all gay men could aspire to and achieve." Anything resulting in unbroken paragraphs of Don and Timmy rates a 10 out of me.