A MURDER MOST CAMP, cozy amateur-sleuth mystery with added queerness!

A MURDER MOST CAMP
NICOLAS DiDOMIZIO
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The Guncle meets Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies in this fun, twisty mystery following a spoiled nepo baby forced to work at a struggling summer camp who stumbles into a real-life murder mystery he has no choice but to solve.

Rustic cabins. Lakefront bonfires. A painfully hot lifeguard. And a murder? Summer has never been this camp.

Mikey Hartford IV has coasted through his twenties in a distracted blur of yachts and sex and partying. But when his father discovers his latest million-dollar impulse buy and changes the terms of his trust, the party's finally over. Now, unless Mikey can make a positive contribution to the world before his thirtieth birthday—one that doesn't involve throwing cash at his problems—he'll never see another yacht again. (Or even so much as a canoe.)

Enter: Camp Lore, a struggling summer camp in upstate New York where Mikey has to work as the oldest, least-qualified staffer to prove that he can "do good" alongside his twelve-year-old aunt. (Yes, aunt.) But Mikey isn't sure he'll be able to survive the camp's ramshackle living conditions, let alone the gaggle of preteens who won't leave his side. And when his campers become obsessed with a local legend set at an abandoned cabin on the grounds, Mikey's chances of not making it through the summer become dangerously real—because it turns out there's a murder hidden beneath Camp Lore. And someone there will stop at nothing to keep it that way.

Solving a decade-old cold case will surely be enough "good" for Mikey to earn his inheritance. He just has to stay alive long enough to do it…

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My Review: What a hoot! This is one of those reads you, as a member of a group being threatened with ever-worsening life outcomes by the very government holding power over you, really, really can use right about now. I was completely prepared to roll my eyes and smile. I needed the hit of "it will be okay, smile more" energy I expected from the description.

I got that. I also got a fun mystery to solve. (Which...well...I've been readin' mysteries since 1967, hard to pull the wool over my eyes.) And a grossly overprivileged trust-fund workshy queenie-queen gets thrown into existential panic as my whipped cream topping on the sundae of this story.

I deliberately avoided using the "cherry" metaphor for reasons I hope are obvious.

What happens is kinda not the point of the story, it's what Mikey becomes in dealing...for the first time...with what happens when his woefully unprepared self is the one in charge of handling what happens. A pillow princess by avocation, Mikey is not at all accustomed to using the space in his brain around his movie trivia and his taste for hot gold-diggers for much of anything. It's "cute" in a young guy. (I don't think so, but that's conventional wisdom.) Mikey's dad isn't havin' it as a life for his soon-to-be-thirty son. Mikey gets a job as his aunt's kind-of carer. The twist is his aunt is twelve. (Go Gramps!) And the job's at a summer camp for her.

He, the laziest human imaginable, is about to be responsible for everything a camp counselor does. Without having been to camp.

*gleeful hand rubbing*

It goes like you'd expect: Poorly.Except, of course, not really. Lurching from crisis to problem to rebellion, Mikey finds the way out of leading teens by example is following his own teen passion for filmmaking. Telling people the story of a long-ago counselor who vanished without a trace and is rumored to have been murdered...his aunt's a true-crime nut, no one in the 2020s has not encountered the genre pervading our culture, and really honestly in our heartiest of hearts are any of us utterly immune to the appeal? Real people fall into awful circumstances and never receive justice because there are so many who need it and so few who know how to deliver it.

Opportunity practically uses a tactical battering ram on Mikey's door. He's now leading by example, helping his aunt find purpose, and attracting the kind of man who's more than physiologically a man...a strong, capable, grounded person with a man's anatomy.

So here's my reservation, and the lost fifth star's explanation. Jackson is a hottie with a heart. Sofar so good. He's way out of Mikey's league, but people cross those lines all the time because "the heart wants what it wants or else it doesn't care." (Bless you, Emily Dickinson!) It's the...unearned-ness...of Jackson's love for Mikey, it's the way Mikey really doesn't set out to become Jackson's man but kinda selfishly just accepts it is happening, that sticks in my craw. It's consistent and fully supported in the storyline, it's clearly how Mikey would have to receive the loving attention of a man like Jackson as a gift, but theres something off about that dynamic for me.

But that's what reviews are about, right? I'm here to say "the story worked but..." so you'll have a picture of how you think you'll respond not just what events you can expect to occur. If you want a book report ask a chatbot for one.

Only real people have opinions.

Vale Richard Stevenson, 1938-2022: KNOCK OFF THE HAT

KNOCK OFF THE HAT
RICHARD STEVENSON
Bywater Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A dishonorably discharged World War II vet takes a job as a private investigator and begins looking into a sudden and extraordinary wave of gay-bashing in Philadelphia.

It's steaming August in post-war Philadelphia. Clifford Waterman, dishonorably discharged from the Army for "an indecent act with a native" in Cairo, can't go back to his job as a police detective and is struggling to make a go of it as a private investigator. He's soon hired to help a young man caught in a gay bar raid who can't afford the $500 bribe a corrupt judge demands to make a "morals charge" go away.

In the blink of an eye, an entire gay neighborhood is suddenly under siege, and Waterman has to find out why the cops, courts, and the city powers that be have unleashed a wave of brutal gay-bashing—astonishing even for that time and place.

Kept moving by Jim Beam, bluesy jazz, and a stubborn sense of outsider's pride, Waterman makes his way through Philadelphia's social, political, and financial swamp to rescue a few unlucky souls and inflict at least a bit of damage to the rotten system that would lead to the Stonewall rebellion in New York City 22 years later.

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My Review: Vale Richard Stevenson, 1938-2022. This story was to launch a new series of historical mysteries that will not now see their fruition. As a standalone, this is not the most satisfying read for us who read our mysteries to see ma'at served, order restored, evil accounted for.

Why then bother to read it? Because this past could easily become our collective future.

Its thrust is the (I had hoped) well-established truth that gayness is only made problematic by the systems designed to make it so; those are always systems of greed, exclusion, and therefore profit.

Waterman is a decently well-delineated character whose embrace of Otherness resonates with me. I get entirely his desire to stand up and say, "Enough is enough," in the face of those who want only one thing: More. He says "enough" in the face of the yawning voids that scream for, demand, extort, and ruin in search of More.

I hope the pathology of organizing your life in pursuit of More is obvious. I hope the courage to say "enough" exists in greater quantity than the laziness or apathy to let the loudest, the nastiest, the least likely to forgive have their way unopposed.

Because there is no end to, no satisfaction in, no glut capable of ending the search for, More.

MURDER AT THE MATINEE, second quozy Bertie Carroll mystery...good fun!

MURDER AT THE MATINEE
JAMIE WEST
Brabinger Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.42 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Following on from the success of Death on the Pier, gay playwright detective Bertie Carroll returns for the second book in this golden-age-style whodunnit series, set in the exciting world of theatreland in 1930s London.

An unexpected phone call from a rival playwright puts Bertie centre stage in another mystery. Can he help unravel the motive behind a mysterious newspaper advert that boldly declares a murder will take place during a show’s third act? There’s only one problem, there is no murder in the third act of the play!

When a victim is discovered and the police are brought in, Bertie and Inspector Hugh Chapman get thrown awkwardly back together as they both work to find the killer.

The spotlight falls on each suspect in turn and, this time, even Bertie is not above suspicion. But can rivalries and differences be put aside to solve this devious murder?

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My Review: A riff on Dame Agatha's A Murder is Announced, this quozy story of Bertie Carroll coming to the aid of frenemy Alice, with his...well, his policeman Hugh there to do...rather less than in the first book; and then narrowly miss out on taking a starring role in the murder as a suspect so that comes out okay.

The reason that sounds incoherent is that I felt more at sea this time than last. How is it Hugh, clearly being set up as Bertie's Gentleman Caller, recedes more into the background? I wasn't expecting grand passion, it may be set in the theatre world but it's 1930s London so discretion was all. However Hugh and Bertie weren't as bantering-mates-with-subtext this time. That was disappointing. I suspect we'll get more of the bantering, and maybe even that mooted swim from the first book, in the next one.

I was pretty clear on who killed Alice but really didn't know why until the polyphonic ending unfolded. This was more than enough to satisfy my series-mytery reader brain. The first book's adeptness at scene-setting that transported me, this time, to 1930s London (instead of the first book's Brighton) is very much in evidence again. The author is a theatre professional. It's clear he's also willing to do careful research into the past. It is always a pleasure to read the words of someone who presents the world being evoked with such panache and confidence.

Aside from missing more Hugh-time for Bertie and me, I felt the mystery was satisfying my series-story craving enough to get a solid four stars. I probably wouldn't have been as generous if I'd read this book first, so read Death on the Pier (my review linked above) before this. But don't miss out. Bertie and Hugh will wile away a few hours while you're focused on the made-up problems of fictional people.