A Tricky Bit of Gay History

From time to time, I'll surf the recommendations at Goodreads.com in search of books I might enjoy. I've been reading more novels with gay protagonists lately, and so the recommendations have skewed that way. That's how I was led to the first of a series of books about a gay private detective named Donald Strachey.

The synopsis of the book, Death Trick, was a somewhat generic P.I. story with a gay twist. Donal Strachey is hired by a couple to track down their adult son, Billy. Billy is the only real suspect in a murder and has now gone missing. But the couple isn't hiring Strachey to prove Billy's innocence. They just want him found and dealt with; they haven't accepted their son's gay "lifestyle."

The thing that nudged me over the edge into giving the book a try was when I remembered I'd actually heard of this Donald Strachey character before. A few of the books in this series had been made into T.V. movies by an LGBT-focused cable network. Though I'd never seen any of the adaptations, I figured there might at least be something here if people had bothered to turn the books into movies. (Of course, it's also possible that they were taking what little LGBT-themed material they could get and running with it. Anyhoo....)

What I didn't know before I started reading the book was just how old it is. It turns out that Richard Stevenson (the pen name of Richard Lipez) has written over a dozen Donald Strachey mysteries, and this first one was published back in 1981. That makes it a fascinating time capsule. It's set little more than a decade after the Stonewall riots marked a monumental turning point for LGBT rights. It was written at a time before the AIDS epidemic had spread widely enough to make its indelible mark on how gay men in the 80s saw themselves. Between all this, plus the natural passage of almost 40 years, Death Trick is a window into a very different time.

In the world of Death Trick -- the world of being openly gay in the late 1970s -- there's really only one way to be. Any relationship you're in is non-exclusive; the pursuit of casual sex is expected, and has nothing to do with commitment to a long-standing partner. Partying any night of the week (if not every night of the week) until the sun comes up is required. Every envelope should be pushed, every button pressed. That's how people of the time worked to push progress forward.

It's also what makes this book to depart from the well-traveled road of private detective fiction. Without these elements, Death Trick doesn't really stand out much. It's a boilerplate take on the form... though it is interesting to see how the author has tweaked its conventions in light of his protagonist.

Ultimately, I didn't find Death Trick to be an especially thrilling read. It was a bit too simple and predictable. But there was also an almost educational, eye-opening quality to it. It's like a bit of historical reading, and in that it had more merit than Richard Stevenson could ever have anticipated. Overall, I'd give the book a B-. It perhaps doesn't quite deserve a full recommendation, though you may be intrigued if you give it a try.