The Death of Blue Mountain Cat


Book Description

In this “exciting” sequel to The Man Who Understood Cats, psychiatrist Jack Caleb and cop John Thinnes must solve the murder of a Native American artist (Library Journal). Native American artist Blue Mountain Cat seems determined to provoke controversy with his new installation, which strikes art patron Jack Caleb as “Andy Warhol meets Jonathan Swift in Indian country.” As the artist’s former therapist, Caleb can’t help wondering what is driving this new aggressively satirical direction with pieces like Red Man’s Revenge and Native American Gothic. There’s something to offend everybody, many of whom are at the opening—including a litigious developer, an outraged Navajo woman, a black-market antiquities dealer, and the artist’s stunning blond wife, who discovers her husband stabbed to death in a gallery room with a bone knife from his own exhibit. When Chicago homicide detective John Thinnes arrives at the museum, he drafts his friend Caleb to help him navigate the crime scene and the terra incognita of the art world. As the suspects expand to include a desperate museum director, a savage critic, a married mistress, and a shady partner, the shrink and the cop once again find themselves something of an odd couple but a very effective detective duo . . .




The Man Who Understood Cats


Book Description

The award-winning first novel pairing gay psychiatrist Jack Caleb with burned-out Chicago cop John Thinnes is a “cunning, adroit debut” (Publishers Weekly). When a CPA with OCD is found shot dead in his locked apartment with a .38 in his hand, only two people don’t believe he killed himself. One is streetwise and world-weary Chicago homicide detective John Thinnes. The other is the victim’s therapist, Dr. Jack Caleb, whose sudden appearance at the crime scene immediately arouses the cop’s suspicions. The two men couldn’t be more different. Caleb is wealthy, well-educated, and gay, witty enough to name his housecats Sigmund Freud and B. F. Skinner. Between job burnout and marital trouble, Thinnes lost his sense of humor a long time ago. He’s not sure if the good doctor is an ally or his prime suspect. But as they begin to work together, the unlikely partners discover they do share common ground, most notably as Vietnam vets, and that they might be able to help each other as well as solve a baffling murder . . . “Winner of [St. Martin’s] Best First Malice Domestic Novel Award . . . this assured and unusual debut boasts expressive language and sinewy notions of suspense.” —Publishers Weekly




The Cymry Ring


Book Description

A “skillfully written, wonderfully entertaining, and fascinatingly detailed” time-travel adventure from the author of the Caleb and Thinnes mysteries (Booklist). British detective Ian Carreg never expected his life to unfold like this. A recent widower, the fifty-five-year-old inspector has just learned he’s going to be a grandfather. But duty still calls. He’s been assigned to find and arrest Dr. Jemma Henderson, the daughter of a famous British physicist, for extradition to the United States, where she’s been convicted of murdering her lover. But when he pursues her to the ancient stone monument of Cymry Henge, he is knocked unconscious and awakens in what appears to be Roman Britain in the year sixty AD. Ian is convinced he’s in the middle of some elaborate hoax—until he comes face to face with Celts and Romans and begins to doubt his sanity. When he and Jemma are taken prisoner by the Romans and forced to travel to Londinium, Ian realizes they must work together to foil a plot that could radically alter history . . .




Death in West Wheeling


Book Description

“Breakneck pace and solid atmosphere are the hallmarks here.” —AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION When a local schoolteacher disappears from rural West Wheeling, acting sheriff Homer Deters investigates. Before long he's got three more missing persons, two unidentified bodies, a car theft, a twenty-three-vehicle pile-up in the center of town, a missing tiger, and a squad of agitated ATF agents to deal with. With no help from the Feds, Homer turns to his buddy, Rye Willis, and West Wheeling's eccentric postmistress, Nina Ross, to locate the missing, identify the bodies, and bring a murderer to justice. Packed with regional charm and Deters’ wit, Death in West Wheeling shows how wild one case can get.




Courtin' Murder in West Wheeling


Book Description

Sheriff Homer Deters returns in the “delightful” sequel to Death in West Wheeling from the award-winning author of the Caleb and Thinnes mysteries (Publishers Weekly). When Sheriff Homer Deters’ proposal to his sweetheart is interrupted by the report of a body in a ditch, he discovers the corpse is skeletal and half the town has trampled through the scene. Before the investigation gains traction, someone turns a truckload of actual mustangs loose in the Truck Stop parking lot. And when the truck driver is subsequently murdered, Homer has a real whodunit on his hands. Complaints about rats and transients, jackasses of the two and four-legged variety, and a series of hijackings interrupt both investigations. While Homer tries to sort things out, a local farmer is murdered and dumped in another ditch. With help from the State Police and plenty of assistance from his sweetheart, deputy, and adopted son, the West Wheeling Sheriff manages to survive an Indian uprising, West Wheeling’s Oktoberfest, and Sadie Hawkins Day. He just has to solve the murders while he’s at it. Praise for Death in West Wheeling “Dymmoch pushes into Joan Hess territory with this rollicking tale of murder, moonshine and madcap law enforcement . . . Dymmoch handles this farcical crime wave with down-home warmth and humor.”—Kirkus Reviews “Homer keeps his cool, handily solving murders and disappearances. Breakneck pace and solid atmosphere are the hallmarks here.”—Booklist




The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film


Book Description

In The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film (2005), scholar Drewey Wayne Gunn examined the history of gay detectives beginning with the first recognized gay novel, The Heart in Exile, which appeared in 1953. In the years since the original edition's publication, hundreds of novels and short stories in this sub-genre have been produced, and Gunn has unearthed many additional representations previously unrecorded. In this new edition, Gunn provides an overview of milestones in the development of gay detectives over the last several decades. Also included in this volume is an annotated list of novels, short stories, plays, graphic novels, comic strips, films, and television series with gay detectives, gay sleuths of secondary importance, and non-sleuthing gay policemen. The most complete listing available--including the only listing of early gay pulp novels, present-day male-to-male romances, and erotic films--this new edition brings the work up to date with publications missed in the first edition, particularly cross-genre mysteries, early pulps, and some hard-to-find volumes. The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film: A History and Annotated Bibliography lists all printed works in English (including translations) presently known to include gay detectives (such as amateur sleuths, police detectives, private investigators, and investigative reporters), from the 1929 play Rope until the present day. It includes all films in English, subtitled or dubbed, from the screen version of Rope in 1948 and the launch of the independent film Spy on the Fly in 1966 through the end of 2011. Complete with two appendices--a bibliography of sources and a list of Lambda Literary Awards--and indexes of titles, detectives, and actors, this extensively revised and updated reference will prove invaluable to mystery collectors, researchers, aficionados of the subgenre, and those devoted to GLBTQ studies.




The Feline Friendship


Book Description

Psychiatrist Jack Caleb and Chicago cop John Thinnes return in this “well-crafted procedural . . . intriguingly presented . . . spiked by psychological insight” (Booklist). After a woman is brutally raped in the posh Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago and a second rape victim is murdered, the hunt for a serial rapist/killer becomes a “heater” case, front-burnered due to the scrutiny of publicity. The pressure is on Det. John Thinnes and his new partner, a strong-willed feminist cop named Don Franchi. Psychiatrist Jack Caleb is acting as a police consultant to construct a psychological profile of the rapist, and Thinnes asks his friend to step in and mediate the friction between him and his partner. If they’re going to solve an increasingly complicated and disturbing case that matches the MO of earlier, similar crimes in another Illinois city, they need to find a way to work together . . .




Pennsylvania Wild Cats


Book Description




The Fall


Book Description

How far would you go to save your life and your world? After a nasty divorce, single mother Joanne Lessing finally has her life together, and she’s made a name for herself as a photographer. Then, while on assignment, she witnesses a hit and run. Property damage only. No big deal, she thinks. So she does the right thing—calls the cops. Joanne is dismayed when FBI agents arrive with the local detective. They admit the hit and run driver was a mob killer fleeing the scene of his latest hit. Joanne is relieved to find she can’t really identify the hit man. But when she sees the killer again while on another assignment, she takes his picture and finds her new life and her son’s future threatened. Caught between the Mob and the FBI, she’s on her own...




Sequels


Book Description

A guide to series fiction lists popular series, identifies novels by character, and offers guidance on the order in which to read unnumbered series.