Tongue Tied

A Donald Strachey Mystery, Book 8 - Under normal circumstances, PI Donald Strachey wouldn't take a job from right-wing radio "shock jock" J-Bird - the man's hate-filled homophobic rants offend Strachey deeply. And not just Strachey: listeners include people identifying as members of a long-defunct gay rights activists, the Forces of Free Faggotry. Though peaceful, the group was originally known for rescuing young men from enforced conversion therapy. When J-Bird's potty-mouthed sidekick is kidnapped, and the FFF claim credit, Strachey becomes involved. Leads take Strachey to a Berkshire Wooley Llama Cheese farm, Brooklyn, late night New York and Long Island as he finds himself partnered with a not-out gay cop he'd tangled with in the cop's Albany days and a shy, but talented, housebreaking Amish gay man. When J-Bird himself is kidnapped, the stakes are raised as the first body parts arrive as a warning ... Written over a period of three decades, the Donald Strachey series authentically chronicles gay life as it unfolded across upstate New York, Washington and elsewhere. An author's note is included. "Don't we all entertain fantasies about what we'd like to do to those toxic shock jocks who foul the airwaves with their hate-filled rants? Donald Strachey, the fastidious gay sleuth in Richard Stevenson's Tongue Tied and several previous books in this sophisticated series, is above all that. But as a favor to a friend in the New York Police Department, this Albany private eye lends a hand when Jay Plankton, a radio talk show host appositely named for a primitive life-form, is plagued by threats from a long-dormant gay-activist group that appears to have resurfaced as a gang of crypto-terrorists. Once the alphabetized threats turn nasty, Stevenson smoothly engineers the action into a smartly entertaining investigation that also makes a serious point about the uneasy lives of gay cops: 'The out cops get beat up on, and the non-out cops beat up on themselves.'" - New York Times "Richard Stevenson's mysteries are among the wittiest and most politically pointed around today." - Washington Post