Part of Harry Stoner Mystery, book 11
First published 2013
Mason Greenleaf vanishes from his Mount Adams home on a sweltering summer afternoon. The beloved teacher leaves behind bewildered colleagues, former students, and his lover Cindy Dorn. When Greenleaf's body surfaces in a sordid hotel, police rule it suicide. Private investigator Harry Stoner thinks otherwise. Cindy hires Stoner to dig deeper, and he uncovers troubling secrets about Greenleaf's sexual past. The case forces Stoner to confront his reluctance to investigate another gay man's violent death, a hesitation rooted in the brutal Lessing case years earlier. That investigation had led Stoner to conceal a deliberate killing. Now he faces another complex web of sexuality and violence. As Stoner pursues the truth, he finds himself drawn to Cindy Dorn in ways that surprise him. What begins as a professional obligation becomes a personal reckoning that challenges everything Stoner thought he knew about justice and connection.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-reckoning, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Mount Adams, Hotel
Period: Sweltering Summer
Audio CD · Blackstone Publishing
Content warnings: sexual-content, violence