For the Love of a Green-Eyed Piano Player

Rating:
Summary: Suspense in San Francisco
Review: This early novel by Mason Powell, finally available to the public, is a gripping, sensual suspense story of urban gay life in 80's San Francisco. The actor protagonist, now in regular rehearsals of "Hamlet", met his piano player while performing as Emperor Norton at a one-time opening. As the book begins, he is walking on the beach and mulling over his new non-relationship, when a flirtatious passer-by first intrigues and then attacks him.

His self-defense techniques are derived totally from his actor's training, and his defeat and escape of the gay-basher involve the reader in the thought-processes common to gay men "out" in a world of danger, prejudice, and denial. While his attacker is being identified and discovered to be a serial killer of gay men, our hero's budding love affair is moving along at a growing pace, as the plot and the suspense thicken.

This book is a predictable vanilla love story, and as far from the pornographic excess of its author's first book as it could be, which will relieve some readers and disappoint others. As a study in men's relationships, it is somewhat shallow and comfortable; we share inumerable details of the characters' food and drink preferences, without really learning much about their histories or in-depth motivations. We are shown a slender slice of gay San Francisco, as the main characters generally avoid it, going dancing with women from the cast of the play, and lunching anywhere outside that they can reach during their brief break from rehearsals.

Only in the club scenes, where our hero is always inexplicably alone, and the killer seeking him always closer, do we really experience the fashion-perfect, disco-trick world of San Francisco's gay night life. Our hero's thoughts sometimes seem a parody of gay obsessiveness; while being chased for his life through long stretches of the Mission district, he notices and describes the architecture for pages, wondering at the brickwork, noting historic buildings, and barely bringing the somewhat confused reader with him into a place of safety at last.

The book's charm stems from several factors: Powell's true theatrical know-how, and his descriptions of the inside view of Shakespearean performance, are fascinating. His knowledge of the City, its best views and sunsets and secret turnings, seem true, and give us a feel for the geography of the story. And the amazing side-plot, in which our hero agrees to impersonate a long-lost relative of the piano player's aged Orange County aunt, is weird and wonderful. We see an actor (not a criminal) create himself as a full-blown character, right down to family pictures, food preferences, and Hong-Kong laundry marks.

This almost extraneous section, a marvelous family drama, exists so Powell can show us hundreds of miles of Southern California through his eyes, and only peripherally hooks into the suspense and danger waiting back in San Francisco. Meeting any family, even some as strange as these, traditionally advances a love story, and before this journey is half over, we know the final commitment between our lovers is inevitable.

This book is exciting, tense and hard to put down. As an early novel, it promises more than it delivers, and some parts, such as the eternally long and descriptive drive across Southern California, are curiously irrelevant. And the typographical errors found throughout this paperback publication are disturbing to the alert reader. But we see very little of such matter-of-fact gay fiction, in which the adventure, not the lifestyle nor the sexual games, is the thing. Readers of suspense, gay readers young and old, lovers of San Francisco, and fans of Mason Powell's very good writing will all enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Suspense in San Francisco
Review: This early novel by Mason Powell, finally available to the public, is a gripping, sensual suspense story of urban gay life in 80's San Francisco. The actor protagonist, now in regular rehearsals of "Hamlet", met his piano player while performing as Emperor Norton at a one-time opening. As the book begins, he is walking on the beach and mulling over his new non-relationship, when a flirtatious passer-by first intrigues and then attacks him.

His self-defense techniques are derived totally from his actor's training, and his defeat and escape of the gay-basher involve the reader in the thought-processes common to gay men "out" in a world of danger, prejudice, and denial. While his attacker is being identified and discovered to be a serial killer of gay men, our hero's budding love affair is moving along at a growing pace, as the plot and the suspense thicken.

This book is a predictable vanilla love story, and as far from the pornographic excess of its author's first book as it could be, which will relieve some readers and disappoint others. As a study in men's relationships, it is somewhat shallow and comfortable; we share inumerable details of the characters' food and drink preferences, without really learning much about their histories or in-depth motivations. We are shown a slender slice of gay San Francisco, as the main characters generally avoid it, going dancing with women from the cast of the play, and lunching anywhere outside that they can reach during their brief break from rehearsals.

Only in the club scenes, where our hero is always inexplicably alone, and the killer seeking him always closer, do we really experience the fashion-perfect, disco-trick world of San Francisco's gay night life. Our hero's thoughts sometimes seem a parody of gay obsessiveness; while being chased for his life through long stretches of the Mission district, he notices and describes the architecture for pages, wondering at the brickwork, noting historic buildings, and barely bringing the somewhat confused reader with him into a place of safety at last.

The book's charm stems from several factors: Powell's true theatrical know-how, and his descriptions of the inside view of Shakespearean performance, are fascinating. His knowledge of the City, its best views and sunsets and secret turnings, seem true, and give us a feel for the geography of the story. And the amazing side-plot, in which our hero agrees to impersonate a long-lost relative of the piano player's aged Orange County aunt, is weird and wonderful. We see an actor (not a criminal) create himself as a full-blown character, right down to family pictures, food preferences, and Hong-Kong laundry marks.

This almost extraneous section, a marvelous family drama, exists so Powell can show us hundreds of miles of Southern California through his eyes, and only peripherally hooks into the suspense and danger waiting back in San Francisco. Meeting any family, even some as strange as these, traditionally advances a love story, and before this journey is half over, we know the final commitment between our lovers is inevitable.

This book is exciting, tense and hard to put down. As an early novel, it promises more than it delivers, and some parts, such as the eternally long and descriptive drive across Southern California, are curiously irrelevant. And the typographical errors found throughout this paperback publication are disturbing to the alert reader. But we see very little of such matter-of-fact gay fiction, in which the adventure, not the lifestyle nor the sexual games, is the thing. Readers of suspense, gay readers young and old, lovers of San Francisco, and fans of Mason Powell's very good writing will all enjoy this book.