Hostile Ground
When Arab American detective Mahir Hussein agrees to go undercover in a Seattle nightclub run by Gene Lombardi, a notorious drug and prostitution kingpin, he doesn’t expect to fall for the gangster’s security chief, but he does. Fortunately, Mahir quickly figures out that David Ridley isn’t a gangster but a fellow detective infiltrating the gang. Together, they discover that Lombardi is using teenage boys as mules to carry cocaine to his runners, but each boy only makes three deliveries before he disappears. Where do the boys go? Are they killed? Although the assignment is bad enough, it becomes worse when Mahir’s nephew is kicked out of his home after he announces that he’s gay. Trying to shelter the boy while staying undercover turns into a nearly impossible task, which becomes nightmarish when the nephew decides to follow Mahir to work and is forcefully conscripted by Lombardi as a mule. Witt and Voinov give readers not only a suspenseful ride into Seattle’s underbelly but also a satisfying romance, with explicit gay sex scenes between two hardened, macho detectives. --Pat Henshaw