First in the Chanse MacLeod series. Chanse is hired by a young man who he meets at the gym. His lover is being blackmailed and he wants Chanse to investigate it. Chanse goes to meet him to review some of the evidence only to find the man shot dead in his apartment. As he investigates even though he doesn't do murders he learns that no one really liked the dead man. He meets several people who would like to see him dead, but none really who would have done the deed themselves. Twists and turns abound with the blackmail scheme and gay rights activists. Read others in this series before but had never read this one prior. Now going to re-read the whole series. ( )

Gay New Orleans PI Chanse MacLeod is approached by a prospective client to put a stop to a blackmailer. When he calls at the client's house to see the blackmail threat and the incriminating videotape he finds his client has been shot, apparently as the victim of a hate crime, but there is no sign of the threatening letter or the videotape. As the temperature and social tensions rise, Chanse tries to find out what's really going on.

I enjoyed this story. Chanse has an interesting back story that is slowly revealed. I did find it slightly disconcerting that Chanse had to go and knock on a neighbour's door to use a phone. I'm sure I'd already had a cell phone for several years by 2002 (the publication date) and I was by no means an early adopter, being one of the last people at work to get one. ( )

The Book Report: Chanse MacLeod, former LSU football star, New Orleans policeman, and present-day private detective, gets a client in the most appealing possible way for a gay male mystery: His hottie hirer picks him out, and up, at the gym. Hunky Mike Hansen is, wait for it, in love with a rich, married, closeted doctor who is being blackmailed. Mike arranges to meet Chanse at Mike's home, after getting the incriminating blackmail tape from Dr. Delicious McWallet. (We don't find out his real name until well into the book.) Chanse, worn out from the workout and still sad over his peripatetic lover's departure for another multi-day trip as a flight attendant, oversleeps and is an hour late for their meeting. Darn good thing, too, since if he'd been on time, he'd've seen Mike being murdered.

Discovering the body, reporting the murder to his former colleagues at NOPD, and then trying to stay out of the circus that ensues is the meat of this short first mystery in a series by author and anthologist Herren. Gold diggers, horny creeps, jaded reporters, single-minded do-gooders, whores and whoremongers jig and caper through Herren's pre-Katrina French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny. MacLeod's laconic page presence still allows for character development, since we're in first person. What solves the mystery is an attempted murder that, for a wonder, vivifies the term "feed 'em to the fishes." The resolution is in no way a surprise, but the way it arrives is fun.

My Review: I'm not sure Chanse would give my fat carcass the time of day, muscle queen that he is, but I don't mind hitchhiking on his betank-topped muscular shoulder. The book is a fantasy, and it's not played for realism, but it's got some good character bases for a long-legged series: gruff black lady cop, honest and forthright, whom everyone erroneously assumes to be a lesbian; Chanse's hag, reporter Paige Tourneur, is appealingly damaged and quite obviously hangin' with his hunky self out of self-protection, so fertile ground for fun developments; Chanse's lover the air mattress (gay male slang for stewards), who commits the Unpardonable Sin of saying "I love you" to Chanse not once, oh no we can ignore that, but TWICE! Chanse's attack of the fantods led me to the mirror to see if maybe Herren had a camera in there...and leads Chanse to the brink of an affair with a most, most inappropriate man.

Enjoyable fluff, this. I wish the author's editor had made him do a few of the obvious development tricks, delving just a wee bit deeper into the recurring characters' pasts, but all in all this is a good and solid effort. It lacks suspense to an almost fatal degree as a mystery, but it makes up for it in blithe and quick-witted writing. Book 2, [Murder in the Rue St. Ann], awaits on the nightstand. It's only 1am, I can fit in 50pp or so, can't I? ( )

Chanse MacLeod used to be a New Orleans police officer. Now he's a private detective. One day, he's hired by a young gay man, Mike Hansen, to try to find, and stop, the person who his blackmailing Mike and his older, rich, closeted lover. Before Chanse can get his teeth into the case, though, Mike is murdered, and the words "Faggots die" is written in blood on the wall. Though MacLeod (and the police) believe that the murder is more likely connected to the blackmail, the leader of a local gay rights organization insists that it's a gay bashing, and begins to politicize the murder. Then MacLeod, and the victim's neighbor, are shot at by someone shouting "Die faggots", and he begins to wonder.

Now, I have to admit that I figured out a good bit of what was going on before the end, but, after all, I've been reading mystery novels for literally decades, so I have a pretty good idea of what to expect. But there were some twists and turns here, and I do appreciate the fact that Herren doesn't fall back on the culprit or culprits' confession to solve the case.

This being the first of a series of Chanse MacLeod mysteries, we get a fair bit of back story about Chanse and the woman in his life, his reporter friend Paige Tourneur. Chanse has also just begun a relationship with Paul, a flight attendant, and I thought Herren did a masterful job of showing Chanse's ambivalence about it, from worrying that Paul might have a boyfriend in every airport to the opposite worry that Paul might be falling in love before Chanse is ready.

There's a long list of writers in the acknowledgements, and many of them are people whose work I've enjoyed over the years*. So to know that people like Julie Smith and Dorothy Allison saw something in Herren's work was certainly an incentive to read this. They weren't wrong.

*Story! Several years ago, I wandered into the Faubourg Marigny bookstore looking for a book to read on my flight home. I was looking specifically for a book by Katherine V. Forrest, which they didn't have. But the young man suggested that I try instead Death by the Riverside, by a local writer, J.M. Redmann. Great book, and ever since then I've been hooked on the concept of looking for local authors wherever I travel.