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BEST MURDER OF THE YEAR
by Jon P. Bloch
St Martin's Minotaur, January 2004
278 pages
$13.95
ISBN: 0312301111


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

If BEST MURDER OF THE YEAR was a dessert, it would be huge, frothy, creation, overloaded with meringue and cream and chocolate sauce. You'd devour every mouthful with great relish, but realise that seconds would be an over-indulgence.

Rick Domino is a flamboyantly gay Hollywood gossip columnist and TV name. He and bitchy female anchor Mitzi McGuire are broadcasting from the Academy Awards where Rick's closeted lover Shane Kirk is in line for the best actor award.

Hunky but dim Shane is the shock choice for the Oscar, but doesn't appear to receive his award. Rick goes looking for him and finds him in an alleyway, standing over a corpse, with a gun in his hand. Shane scoots off, leaving Rick holding the gun and with a lot of explaining to do to the police. He has a week in which to clear his name.

Bloch is Hollywood through and through, with the palatial homes, eccentric behaviour, posh parties and ego-ridden actors. And he does camp. Impeccably. The book's opening chapter is howl-aloud hilarious, as Rick schmoozes with the stars and trades barbed insults with the ghastly Mitzi.

The rest of the book is diverting but won't have you turning pages rapidly. There's a nice range of thoroughly mismatched characters, some a mile out of the closet, others a mile in, including butch cop Terry Zane whom, I suspect Bloch has plans for in future books! I have to admit I didn't guess the ending -- it might annoy some readers, but I found it rather neat and cute.

BEST MURDER OF THE YEAR will prove you wrong if you think gay crime writers only write dark, angst-ridden social comment stuff. After all, Dean James has set a wonderful example in POSTED TO DEATH, an inch-perfect pastiche of the sort of book set in an idyllic English village, but with a gay vampire as his hero. Bloch is a worthy addition to the gay writers hijacking the cosy side of the genre.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, February 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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