Genre: Mystery
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
Get It On Amazon
About The Book
It’s about making a sweater. A warm, cozy, crocheted sweater
When a troubled teen named Brown and a senior citizen named Chester meet at an LGBTQ fiber arts group, they both want to crochet sweaters. But yarn, hooks and needles are set aside when the director of The Center is accused of murdering the owner of a neighboring hair salon who posted transphobic attacks on social media. Brown, Chester and the rest of the fiber arts group set out to prove their friend’s innocence. He is innocent — right?
This new mystery by three-time Lambda award-winner Marshall Thornton is set in the familiar universe of Wyandot County, Northern Lower Michigan, but Half Double Murder jumps ahead to the year 2016 with a mix of new and old characters.
The Review
There’s something about Marshall Thornton. He’s one of the best gay writers out there today. By the title, you’d think this was a sort of cozy murder mystery with a gay protagonist, and you’d be sort of right. It certainly isn’t a romance, although queer relationships are important in the story. There’s a marvelous sinister thread running through this story, which differentiates it (in my mind) from the other series Thornton has set in what he calls Upper Lower Michigan (the Henry Milch series).
Chester Carmichael is an older man, still reeling from a relationship ended after sixteen years by the very man who convinced him to move to a picturesque lakeside town in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula. He lives in a charmingly renovated farmhouse by the lake, but within sight of the never-to-be-finished modernist dream house he and his partner were building.
One thing Chester, known as Chess, does to muffle the pain and pass the time, is crochet. He also participates in a weekly fiber arts group at NLM Pride. There he meets a young person who calls herself Brown. Together, quite by accident, Chess and Brown become allies in the effort to clear the name of a young gay man accused of murder—a murder seemingly triggered by a nasty anti-trans attack started on Facebook by a local businesswoman.
Oh, boy, it’s a marvelously complicated story, and the idyllic setting of the two towns—Mason’s Bay and Bellflower—is significantly tainted by the previously unseen thread of homophobia that runs through the community. This dark undercurrent amplifies both Chess’s ongoing suffering at the dismantling of his long-term relationship, and the unexplained backstory of Brown—which is possibly the most sinister shadow in the book’s plot.
The narrative switches back and forth between Brown and Chess’s viewpoints, and the author tightens the screws of anxiety and tension until the story’s startling conclusion. It’s brilliant and unnerving. Not Stephen King unnerving, but very much Marshal Thornton unnerving. Wounded and lonely, Chess becomes the protector of the profoundly damaged teenager who is young enough to be his granddaughter. Chess sees Brown, although he isn’t quite sure what he sees. Brown doesn’t want to be seen, because she has no concept of what kindness and caring are. Somehow, together, they have to help save a young man’s life.
I gather this is just the first of the Gay Crochet mysteries. I can’t wait to see what happens.
Five stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
