Book picks similar to
The Actor's Guide To Murder by Rick Copp
mystery
lgbt
fiction
crime
A Simple Suburban Murder
Mark Richard Zubro - 1988
When a gay high school teacher starts investigating a colleague's murder, he finds beneath the calm veneer of his Midwestern suburb a seamy underbelly of gambling, prostitution, and child abuse.Simple Suburban Murder is the book that started it all--the debut novel of Lambda Literary Award winner Mark Richard Zubro.
Night Drop
Marshall Thornton - 2017
Noah Valentine, the owner of Pinx Video in Silver Lake, notices the fires have taken their toll on fellow shopkeeper Guy Peterson’s camera shop. After the riots end, he decides to stop by Guy’s to pick up his overdue videos, only to find Guy’s family dividing up his belongings. He died in the camera store fire—or did he? Noah and his charmingly meddlesome downstairs neighbors begin to suspect something else might have happened to Guy Peterson. Something truly sinister.The first in a new series from Lambda Award-winner Marshall Thornton, Night Drop strikes a lighter tone than the Boystown Mysteries, while bringing Silver Lake of the early 1990s to life.
Amuse Bouche
Anthony Bidulka - 2003
Back in Saskatoon, he meets a client who may be the bad guy and a quarry. The vile sister, the best friend, the colleague, the ex-lover, the lawyer, the priest, the snoopy neighbour - are they involved? Or is someone else lurking in the shadows?
His Name Is John
Dorien Grey - 2008
His profession is buying, restoring and reselling small apartment buildings around Chicago. Gay and contentedly single at 38, he has, in addition to his globetrotting parents, a devoted sister, a police detective brother-in-law, two nieces and a nephew. Everything in his life is going along perfectly fine until he wakes in the hospital after being hit by a car aware of being watched by someone who isn't there. Despite being sure what happens next can be attributed to his injuries from the accident, Elliott is reluctantly, inexorably, drawn into the search to find a name for the unidentified murdered man who died next to him in the Emergency Room-and who killed him. His investigation takes him on a trail that leads from photographs to motor homes, a body hidden behind a wall for more than sixty years, old neighbors and old enemies, and a nun with a secret she does not know she holds. Along the way, Elliott also finds himself on the threshold of a new relationship with potential he never would have imagined. Elliott invites you to join him on his search in this first book of a new series by popular mystery author Dorien Grey, whose Dick Hardesty mystery series has included four finalists for a Lambda Literary Award.
Flight Dreams
Michael Craft - 2000
In three months, she will be declared legally dead and her fortune will go to Chicago's Catholic Archdiocese. Investigative journalist Mark Manning believes the missing heiress is still alive. To prove his case, he enters a world where religion and politics make uneasy bedfellows -- as he confronts the inescapable fact that he is gay.
Drama Queen
Joe Cosentino - 2015
With dead bodies popping up all over campus, Nicky must use his drama skills to figure out who is playing the role of murderer before it is lights out for Nicky and his colleagues. Complicating matters is Nicky's huge crush on Noah Oliver, a gorgeous assistant professor in his department, who may or may not be involved with a cocky graduate assistant...and is also the top suspect for the murders! You will be applauding and shouting Bravo for Joe Cosentino's fast-paced, side-splittingly funny, edge-of-your-seat, delightfully entertaining novel. Curtain up!
Bourbon Street Blues
Greg Herren - 2003
it doesn't hurt that he's buff, boyish, and completely irresistible, with a job by day as a personal trainer...and the occasional night gig dancing on the bar for rent money. Hey, it's a living. Scotty likes his relaxed life, living upstairs from the coddling lesbian couple he calls his aunties, and hanging out with his eccentric, close-knit family -- stoner-hippie parents, Uptown but well-meaning sister, and scheming lawyer brother. And with New Orleans's biggest circuit party -- Southern Decadence -- about to hit town, Scotty's looking forward to plenty of dancing, cruising, and maybe, just maybe, an adorable Mr. Right.But then Scotty discovers one of his best clients in front of his Decatur Street apartment, shot through the head, execution style. It's even more troubling when his friend Jeremy, he of the disappearing act a year ago, reappears briefly in the bar, begging Scotty to take care of a computer disk for him and spouting something crazy about people being after him. And things get really, really bad when everyone from the cops -- who don't believe anything Scotty says -- to a shadowy man claiming to be an FBI agent is tailing Scotty's every move, waiting for a chance to arrest him...or worse.Now, with help from his best friend David and a gorgeous new lover who just happens to be a cat burglar of the real and not-Cary Grant variety, Scotty's diving into a web of tawdry Southern secrets that stretches all the way to a corrupt political machine whose members would do anything and use anyone to get to Scotty and that disk. Suddenly, the Big Easy's liveliest gay celebration has just taken on asinister glow, and Scotty's carefree living is turning into a desperate race for his life.
First You Fall
Scott Sherman - 2008
When his friend's death is ruled a suicide, Kevin Connor--a hustler by trade, sleuth by default--sets out to prove a case of murder. It doesn't help matters that the victim's grown children, who disapproved of their father's sexual orientation, are only concerned about their inheritance. But they are not Kevin's only problem. His high-strung mother has moved in with him--and she knows nothing about his questionable . . . job. Throw in his super-hot ex - now a New York City detective - and Kevin has more than his hands full. JA Konrath calls Sherman "the gay Janet Evanovich." You'll fall for this sexy, funny first mystery in the Kevin Connor series. Scott Sherman has written for Newsweek, Genre, Instinct, and The Washington Blade. The follow-up to First You Fall, Second You Sin was released by Kensington in October, 2011 in trade paperback and for the Kindle. The third book in the series will be coming out in 2012.
A Body to Dye For
Grant Michaels - 1990
When a vacationing National Park ranger turns up dead in Boston, Stan is implicated in the murder, and must find the killer to clear his own name. With an eye for detail and a mettlesome spirit, Stan finds plenty of clues, but he also confronts the police lieutenant assigned to the case, a man with little tolerance for the world of fashion and style, or for Stan's cheeky attitude. With a sharp tongue as his best defense, a most unlikely detective uses even more unlikely techniques to close the loop and get the killer.
The Little Death
Michael Nava - 1986
A burnt-out public defender battling alcoholism, Rios has reached a crossroads in his life. While interviewing Paris in jail, Rios goes through the motions, but notices that Paris is far more polished and well-off than the usual drug suspects. Paris is mysteriously bailed out—but a few weeks later, he turns up on Rios’s doorstep. Skittish and paranoid, he admits to using heroin and says he’s afraid that his wealthy grandfather wants to murder him.Rios tries to help Paris get clean, but when Paris is found dead of an apparent heroin overdose, Rios is the only one who considers foul play. Determined to find Paris’s killer, Rios knocks on San Francisco’s most gilded doors, where he discovers a family tainted by jealousy, greed, and hate. They’ve been warped by a fortune someone’s willing to kill—and kill again—to possess.At once an atmospheric noir mystery and a scathing indictment of a legal system caught in the maws of escalating corruption, The Little Death chronicles one man’s struggle to achieve true justice for all.
Fatal Shadows
Josh Lanyon - 2000
His old high school buddy (and employee) has been found stabbed to death in a back alley following a loud and very public argument with Adrien the previous evening.Naturally the cops want to ask Adrien a few questions; they are none too impressed with his answers, and when a few hours later someone breaks into Adrien's shop and ransacks it, the law is inclined to think Adrien is trying to divert suspicion from himself.Adrien knows better. Adrien knows he is next on the killer's list.
His Boy
Dean Cole - 2018
Furious, he speeds away from the gates of his luxury home and life into the unknown. When he finds himself stranded on the side of the road in a remote village, his future looking bleak, his dreams wasted on a fairy tale that turned out to be a nightmare, he doesn’t expect the handsome but shaggy-looking bookshop owner, Nathan Marshall, to come to his rescue. A Divine Intervention if Charlie ever saw one.But the village is foreign land to glamour puss Charlie, who’s more at home in the bustling city, shopping for the latest trends. getting his hair coiffed and his nails buffed by his best friends, glamour girls Trinny, Kylie and Sasha than he is trekking through muddy hills in jeans and wellies. And Nathan’s never even seen the inside of a beauty salon, let alone considered having that tumbleweed on his chest waxed. How on earth can a queen even begin to craft himself into something fabulous in such dire circumstances?Hope seems lost until Charlie discovers that an amateur dramatics group are looking for budding stars to fill in two of their starring roles at the last minute. Could the village offer more than babbling streams, scenic moorland and the smell of horse manure? Could it offer a chance for Charlie to claim back the dreams he thought he’d lost? And, more importantly, could an unlikely romance be brewing on the horizon, even when the dark characters from this unlikely pairing’s pasts come back to make matters worse for them?A darkly comic look at love, death, dysfunctional family, emotional trauma and finding yourself, with a huge cast of characters. More than a romance. A story of self discovery. Gay romance. Gay romantic comedy.
Dead in the Garden
Dahlia Donovan - 2018
Join bestselling author Dahlia Donovan on a cosy mystery adventure in Grasmere Cottage Mystery book one. With love, wit, and a murder to solve, life for Valor and Bishan is about to get bloomin' complicated in this sweet gay romance. Dead body in the garden? Check. Mystery to solve? Check. Police focused on the wrong person? Not good. All grown up and graduated, Valor Tarquin Scott, son to Earl and Countess Scott, owns The Ginger’s Bread, a biscuit shop, in Grasmere in the Lake District. The love of his life, Bishan Tamboli, has turned his music studies into a successful career playing with the London Symphony Orchestra. It’s a perfect life with their cat, spending evenings watching Poirot on the television. The nightmare begins with one dead former schoolmate, leading police to believe Bishan is responsible. Valor struggles to solve the cryptic puzzles left behind in a race to prove Bishan’s innocence. He can’t help wondering how far the body count will rise before they manage to stop the killer.
Sleepwalker
Jordan Castillo Price - 2010
That was a year and a half ago. Now he's working a dead-end security job and living in his cousin's two-flat. Thanks to the mysterious George, he's got gaps in his memory too big for his pocket notebook to fill. Jesse Ray Jones is the taxidermist who's trying to help the Faris Natural Sciences Center secure the MAHPS Grant, a funding that would keep the foundering organization afloat for a few more years. He looks like a skatepunk and talks like a science major, which pushes Web's every last hot-button. It's lust at first sight…but hooking up proves difficult when a supervisor at the Center is found bludgeoned to death in the petroglyph alcove—and Jesse and Web are the primary suspects. this novella-length m/m thriller is 40,000 words or approximately 135 pages