Death Vows (A Donald Strachey Mystery)
The Donald Strachey series resumes after a five-year hiatus, with a change of publisher, and without having lost any sleuther virtues. Gay PI Strachey is retained by one of a pair of rich retired lovers to investigate Barry Fields, the young spouse-to-be (the setting is in Massachusetts) of their middle-aged friend Bill Moore. Then the client is murdered, Mob-style. Strachey has already established that Barry, his roommate, and his fiancé, Bill, suspiciously lack pasts, probably because they’re all using aliases, but he can’t see any of them having Mob connections. With Barry in custody, Strachey goes to work for Bill, who immediately decamps to Washington, D.C., and becomes incommunicado. Barry’s roomie absconds, and the murdered man’s partner gets pissy. It’s remarkable, however, what Strachey can find out from working his connections and following his hunches, and fortunate that the cops on the case are unbiased. But then, since Massachusetts’ law legalizing gay marriage is crucial to the plot, it’s politic to present the commonwealth’s lawmen as straight shooters. --Ray Olson