IN THE MAINSTREAM

is where you'll find Dorien Grey and his stellar novels. A masterful writer, Dorien created P.I. Dick Hardesty and a series was born. The book we featured today, THE NINTH MAN is another excellent addition to the long line of critically acclaimed and best-selling novels by Dorien Grey.

THE NINTH MAN
Dorien Grey
ISBN 1-879194-88-0
GLB Publishing



THE NINTH MAN is available in or on-order from any bookstore. You can also purchase from GLB Publishing or Amazon.

BLURB:
Hired to get find the truth behind the mysterious death of a gay man the homophobic police force has declared a suicide, P.I. Dick Hardesty uncovers a series of similar, seemingly unrelated deaths and sets off to find the common link between them which will lead him to the murderer.

EXCERPT:
“Cigarette?” he asked, leaning across me for an ashtray on the night stand.

“Gave ’em up,” I said, smugly.

“You? Liggett & Myers’ best friend?” He paused to light up. “I’m proud of you. Really. It’s a filthy habit.” And he blew a long stream of smoke into my face.

“You little…” I said, lunging out to tickle him under the arm, which always drove him up the wall. He shrieked and rolled away from me, almost falling off the bed in the process.

“Don’t! Please! I’ll be good! Honest!” he gasped between arias of laughter and frantic flailing trying to fend off my insistent tickling. Finally, fearful that the neighbors might be considering calling the police, I stopped.

Tim lay limp, catching his breath. He took a long drag from his cigarette, which had somehow come through the struggle unscathed, and carefully blew the smoke away from me. After a minute, he plumped up his pillow and scooted himself up on the bed, his back against the headboard.

“Okay, so let’s talk,” he said.

“About what?” I asked.

“About whatever it was you called me about,” he said with a grin.

I duplicated his pillow-plumping and hoisted myself up beside him. “You know I hate to mix business with pleasure, but…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. So ‘but’ what?”

“Your office had a case recently—you probably don’t remember it with all those stiffs you have coming and going. Mostly going. But this one was kind of different. Young guy named Bobby McDermott; 27.”

Tim muttered something under his breath—it sounded like “Fuck!” —and stared into the ashtray balanced on his stomach.

“What?” I asked.

Tim turned his head and looked at me, strangely, his eyes searching my face. He said nothing.

I felt a twinge of guilt. “Hey, Tim, I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I don’t have any right to butt into your business….”

Tim shrugged and relaxed a little. “It’s okay,” he said, finally. “Yeah, I remember Bobby McDermott. What about him?”

“The police apparently indicated to his lover that he killed himself. Probably poison. His lover swears he was murdered.”

Tim stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray, staring at it and continuing to tamp it long after it was out. “What makes him think that?”

Patience was never one of my greater virtues, and obviously Tim knew something he wasn’t too eager to share with me.

“Come on, Tim! The guy’s 27. Healthy as a horse—hung like one, too, I understand. No apparent problems—unless you count the lover, but that’s another story. Apparently the only thing he was addicted to is sex, and I’ve never heard of anyone fucking themselves to death, have you?” Tim shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “And then the cops ask the lover what he knows about poisons. That strikes me as more than a little strange; they don’t ask about drugs, but poisons.”

Tim pursed his lips, thought a moment, then turned to me with a deep sigh. “Well,” he said, shaking his head, “somebody was bound to catch on, sooner or later.”

“Catch on to what?” I asked, with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“First of all, he didn’t die of drugs; it was poison. Cyanide, to be exact. Apparently inhaled. Secondly, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t suicide.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked.

“Apart from the fact that cyanide is a pretty esoteric way for anybody to commit suicide, how would someone like McDermott manage to get hold of it? It’s not impossible to come by, but it’s not exactly a household product. But what really blows a hole in the suicide theory—and a little detail that the cops apparently chose to overlook—is that from what I understand, there was absolutely nothing in the room to indicate how he managed to inhale cyanide. No bottles, vials, inhalers, rags, nothing.”

“Weird,” I said, the butterflies still there.

“It gets weirder when you consider that Bobby McDermott wasn’t the first case we’ve had like it in the past couple weeks. He’s the sixth one.”

BUY LINKS:
GLB Publishing
Amazon

For a greater insight into the "real person" behind Dorien Grey, the curious are invited to check out his website and his various blogs: Dorien Grey and Me and A Life in Photos among them.

There is nothing Dorien loves more than hearing from a reader. If you'd like to contact him, just drop him a note. Replies are guaranteed. Dorien answers all his emails.


I'll be back Friday. Until then...

Happy Writing!

Sloane Taylor
Sweet as Honey...Hotter than Hell
www.sloanetaylor.com

DORIEN GREY - MAN OR MYTH

It is with great pleasure we feature Dorien Grey, an author who weaves a mystery with such cunning you become a major player in his stories.

Here's a little about how Dorien arrived on the publishing scene:

If it is possible to have a split personality without being schizophrenic, Dorien Grey qualifies. When long-time book and magazine editor Roger Margason chose the pseudonym “Dorien Grey” for his first book, it set off a chain of circumstances which has led to the comfortable division of labor and responsibility. Roger has charge of day-to-day existence, freeing Dorien—with the help of Roger’s fingers—to write. It has reached the point where Roger merely sits back and reads the stories Dorien brings forth on the computer screen.

It’s not as though Roger has not had an uninteresting life of his own. Two years into college, he left to join the Naval Aviation Cadet program. Washing out after a year, he spent the rest of his brief military career on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean at the height of the cold war. The journal he kept of his time in the military, in the form of letters home, honed his writing skills and provided him with a wealth of experiences to draw from in his future writing. These letters will be appearing in book form shortly.

Returning to Northern Illinois University after service, he graduated with a B.A. in English, and embarked on a series of jobs which worked him into the editing field. While working for a Los Angeles publishing house, he was instrumental in establishing a division exclusively for the publication of gay paperbacks and magazines, of which he became editor. He moved on to edit a leading L.A. based international gay men's magazine.

Tiring of earthquakes, brush fires, mud slides, and riots, he returned to the Midwest, where Dorien emerged, full-blown, like Venus from the sea. They’ve been inseparable (and interchangeable) ever since.

He, and Dorien of course, moved back to Chicago in 2006, where they now devote full time to writing. After having published thirteen books in the popular Dick Hardesty Mystery series, the western/romance/adventure novel, Calico, and the imminent publication of the third book in his new Elliott Smith Mystery series, he is busily at work on yet another Dick Hardesty mystery.

For a greater insight into the "real person" behind Dorien Grey, the curious are invited to check out his website and his various blogs: Dorien Grey and Me and A Life in Photos among them. You can also catch up with Dorien at the Author's Den.

Now, "The Butcher's Son", a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award:

THE BUTCHER'S SON
Book 1 of the Dick Hardesty Mystery Series
DORIEN GREY
ISBN 978-1-879194-86-1
GLB Publishing

Buy Link: Available, as are all of Dorien's books, at any bookstore or on-line bookseller.



BLURB:
It's not bad enough that Dick Hardesty has a job he hates and a boss from hell. He's suddenly put in the untenable position of helping the wildly homophobic chief of police in a run for governor. Throw the chief's twin sons--one of whom may or may not be dead--, a series of bar fires, and a crumbling 5-year relationship, and you have the ingredients for the tale of The Butcher's Son.

EXCERPT:
It had turned rather cool by the time we reached the street. We made a circle around to the car to drop off the plastic grapes and then turned toward the Dog Collar. I didn’t much care for the place. It was a big, cavernous dump that boasted 4 pool tables and a downstairs “dungeon” for those into group sex. Like a lot of older buildings, it had very high ceilings, which the management had recently tried to make appear lower by stretching some sort of black mesh fabric from wall to wall.

The clientele, as the bar’s name might indicate, was supposedly ultra-butch. I’ve got nothing at all against being butch, mind you—if it’s authentic. But the Dog Collar crowd was plastic grapes butch. Still, it always drew a good crowd, and was obviously packed tonight.

We were about two doors from the entrance, when we heard a muffled “Whoomp”which sounded like it came from the alley behind the bar, and a moment or two later, the double front doors burst open and a tidal wave of men washed out into the street, running. Shouts of…“Fire!” could be heard from inside and from those in the river of men gushing through the door. Chris and I stood frozen in mid step, then moved away from the buildings with the crowd and into the street. A wide, flat ribbon of smoke unfurled slowly out the top of the door, over the heads of those scrambling to get out.

No dictionary could ever have described the word “chaos” more vividly. Men were running, pushing, tripping over one another as they emerged, turning around to shout for friends still inside. Two or three guys fought against the tide, trying to go back in, but they couldn’t buck the crowd coming out, and the smoke was getting heavy now.

The single fact of that outward-opening, double-door entrance was all that prevented a human logjam forming there, and blessedly anyone who made it as far as the door was able to escape.

In the far distance, the sound of sirens could already be heard. The street was a milling mass of men; leathermen, pseudo leathermen, male strippers in g-strings and loincloths, college types, hunks, average Joes, older, younger; a cross section of the male gay community. Ironically, music still blared from inside the bar.

Small clusters of guys gathered together, some holding each other, some holding others back. Others pushed their way back and forth through the crowd, trying to locate friends. There were obviously many people hurt—most were coughing uncontrollably as they ran out, and others collapsed just outside the door and were dragged away from the entrance and carried across the street to be laid out on the sidewalk, where others huddled over them, doing what they could to help. Some just stood staring wide-eyed at the door as a few snake-tongues of orange fire began to lick out over the top of the doorway, as if tasting the air. The cacophony of sounds, however, could not hide what were too obviously screams from inside. The music had stopped.

Chris and I were totally walled in by the crowd, many still coughing and smelling of smoke, on one side of the semi-circle of onlookers. We weren’t close enough to the front to be able to do anything, and we were sick with the feeling of helplessness. Still they kept coming out—guys at the front of the crowd, which was being driven back by the increasing heat and billowing smoke, would rush forward to grab anyone who made it through the doors and lead or drag them to safety, or run interference to prevent others from trying to reenter the building to save friends or lovers.

We stood there, pressed against those crowded around us, and looked around to see if there was anyone we knew. Chris stood on tip-toe, trying to see over the heads of those directly around us. Fewer were coming out, now. One guy—probably one of the strippers—stumbled through the doorway, totally naked, obviously badly burned, his hair smoldering. He appeared slowly, back-lit by an angry pulsating orange, and leaned against the door frame as though it were a part of his number. Then he pushed himself forward, made it just outside the door, and toppled like a fallen tree onto the sidewalk before those dashing in to help him could reach him. They picked him up and carried across the street, the crowd parting to allow them through. And an instant later, a form appeared, from the other side of the doorway, crawling on all fours, his shirt on fire. He was grabbed and pulled forward by several guys who slapped at his shirt with their hands to put out the fire. They got him to his feet, but he looked frantically around at the crowd, then broke away and ran back toward the door, from which no one else was emerging. Two of those who’d helped him ran after him and grabbed him just before he reached the door, which was by this time engulfed in flame. They dragged him backward as he fought to break free, straining forward and yelling something we could not make out over the incredible din. There were no more screams coming from inside the bar; just crashing sounds and the triumphant roar of the flames.

The first squad car came racing down the street, siren wailing, lights flashing, horn blasting, followed by no fewer than three fire trucks, with the lights of others closing in from both directions. The crowd scattered before them.

And over all the sirens, and the yells, and the dull thrum of the fire, which was now pouring out of the door and had broken through the roof, I heard a voice:

“Dick! Dick!” I looked around and Chris pointed to the guy whose shirt had been on fire, still being held by his rescuers. It was Bob Allen.

Ambulances were beginning to arrive as the firemen rolled out their hoses and the police…several squads of them by this time, began moving the crowd back to allow the arriving ambulances to get through.

We shouldered our way through the mass of guys to Bob. He had blood running down his left temple from a gash somewhere just above the hairline. But his face! I hope I never see another expression on anyone’s face like I saw on Bob’s. The two guys holding him, seeing that we knew him, reluctantly released him. He grabbed us both, one with each hand, and his knees started to buckle. We grabbed him and held him up between us.

He tightened his grip on our arms. “You’ve got to help me go back in!” he pleaded, and suddenly my head jerked up to meet Chris’s eyes, which mirrored my own shock in realizing why.

“Ramón!” Bob said, pointing to the inferno. “Ramón’s still in there!”

There is nothing Dorien loves more than hearing from a reader. Feel free to drop him a note.

I'll be back Friday. Until then...

Happy Writing!

Sloane Taylor
Sweet as Honey...Hotter than Hell
www.sloanetaylor.com