“Slate, once the darling of Boston’s gay brigade, is losing money like crazy, largely because someone keeps insisting on leaving dead bodies around. Do that often enough, and people start to stay away. And even though Valentine and Lovelace solved the murders in the previous months, it has not helped the business. When more of the clientele are turning up dead -strangled with neckties- turn up at the disco, even Donna Summer's music may not be enough to bring patrons back. The cops, of course are somewhat indifferent, even though there a precinct across the street. So once again, Daniel and Clarisse plunge into an investigation, and once again, it’s only them that can find the killer.”
“I’m a commercial writer and I’m proud of that,” Michael McDowell was once quoted as saying. “I think it is a mistake to try to write for the ages. I write so that people can read my books with pleasure.” McDowell graduated with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English from Harvard in 1972. In 1978 he was awarded his doctorate degree in English and American Literature from Brandeis. He wanted to be a teacher, but sort of stumbled into writing, finding the genre field of horror, male adventure, detective, and thrillers. He admitted that the numerous pseudonyms and collaborations permitted him an opportunity to embrace the challenge of writing in genres that he might not have tried on his own.
Anyways, when it came to this series, as successful as they were, real life apparently was the factor that he and his writing partner Dennis Schuetz stopped after four books. Apparently, they didn’t feel right about writing about the characters carefree lifestyle as AIDS was ravaging the gay community. That may explain, as well, why the guilt-free promiscuity is less here, than in the first two books.
Also, for a while, I wondered exactly when he and Schuetz wrote the books, so fortunately, all of his papers and other correspondents have been curated at Bowling Green State University. Notes there indicate that the books were written within a year of their publication, meaning Canary was penned in 1985 when the AIDS epidemic was in high gear.
As with the previous books, Canary has the rapid-fire dialogue of the Nick and Nora variety, a sort of 1930’s Thin Man series set in the 1980s, in a world populated by drag queens and the women to whom they give make-up tips. They mystery, at times, takes a back seat to issues Daniel and Clarisse’s (who is more predominate here) they have with their friends, but it’s still a fun book and wonderful time capsule to a time when life was still a struggle, but because you had friends –those chosen family members- all was forgotten for a weekend of dancing, drugs, sex, and alcohol
A time before a disease designed to wipe out the homos changed everything.
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