Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Death Trick by Richard Stevenson

Richard Lipez (1938-2022) was the crime fiction reviewer for the Washington Post for years. Under the name Richard Stevenson he wrote a series of mysteries about a gay private investigator named Donald Strachey in Albany, New York. The first book was groundbreaking for the time, portraying Strachey as a personable and conscientious individual, at ease with himself in the years after Stonewall but before the AIDS epidemic unleashed its wrath. Lipez finished the 17^th title in the series before he died. For more about him, see the following links:

·         https://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/local/an-advocate-for-the-under-represented-journalist-and-author-richard-dick-lipez-dies/article_bd2e3de4-a563-11ec-9904-9b11836dc4b2.html

·         https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/books/richard-stevenson-lipez-dead.html

In Death Trick, initially published in 1981 and reprinted several times since, Strachey makes his first appearance, so broke he is not sure he can pay for lunch. The wealthy Stuart Blount hires him to look for his son Billy because Strachey has a reputation as being an excellent finder of missing persons. Billy is accused of killing a man and Blount thinks, because Billy and Strachey are both gay, that Strachey will have insight into where Billy might be. Strachey heartily dislikes the Blounts but he needs the work so he accepts the assignment.

The more Strachey learns about Billy, the more he is convinced that Billy is not the killer. He is alone in that belief, however, as the police see Billy as the answer and have not bothered to consider other alternatives with such an easy out available to them. Strachey unilaterally broadens his assignment to searching for the killer, a search that makes him look at the dead man’s past as well as Billy’s.

In addition to a detailed and careful investigative process, the freewheeling gay lifestyle before AIDS terrorized the world is vividly portrayed along with the overt discrimination and abuse the gay community endured and in some ways still does. The depressing lengths to which some families will go to force their gay children into a straight life are described. It’s nice to realize that some progress has been made in the intervening forty years. Well written and witty. A fine example of late 20^th century private investigator crime fiction.

 

  

·         Publisher: ‎ReQueered Tales (March 18, 2022)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Paperback: ‎264 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1951092589

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1951092580

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.