In Monday's Post

JAMES LEAR - THE HARDEST THING

Killing is easy. Love is... The Hardest Thing

James Lear does Lee Child

Once a major in the U.S. Army, Dan Stagg fell afoul of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In his late 30s, tall, and muscular, Dan is prone to violence, always upholding what he views as justice. He’s offered a great deal of money to protect the young male “secretary” of a powerful real estate broker. The vain, shallow—but most of all hot—young man’s idea of protection includes sex. Dan quickly realizes something strange is going on: he’s being used as a shield for a much more sinister operation and must chose between easy money and sex or the ideals that he embodied in the Army. Why should he do the right thing—particularly when the army betrayed him? The Hardest Thing is a sexy gay mystery as only James Lear can write it: filled with lots of gay sexual encounters, romance, sweat, violence, and conspiracy.

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Thanks to Turnaround books for sending me this. I've read a couple of James Lear's sexy mystery novels before and this looks like good fun. (James Lear is the crime-writing nom-de-plume of firm favourite Rupert Smith.) This newest volume looks as if it might be a bit more violent and brutal even than usual!  A complete change from all the contemporary women's romance I've been reading lately! 

CAMILLA CARR - TOPSY DINGO WILD DOG

"Aspiring actress Mary Jane Shady, the heroine of Carr's raunchy, overdone, sometimes crude comedy, was nicknamed Topsy Dingo Wild Dog by her high-school boyfriend Bobby Henderson after he forced her to have sex with a dog, then ditched her. Now 35, Mary Jane is returning to Uncertain, her hometown in west Texas, for her 20th high-school reunion, full of lust for married Bobby, obsessive guilt over her sexual secret and trepidation because the townies think she's a Hollywood star--when in fact she does peanut-butter commercials. She is unaware that Ralph Painter, her obnoxious agent, and Arabella du Noir, black model turned advertising honcho, will soon arrive in Uncertain for an on-location shoot. In her first novel, playwright and producer Carr lampoons small-town tackiness, crass materialism, anti-Semitism and racism. Uncertain's unconventional residents include Baby Flowers, who takes striptease strolls through town; Mary Jane's mother, who runs a funeral parlor; and her 75-year-old Aunt Lottie, deflowered on a car top by her hubby Leo, who sports a Garfield the Cat tattoo on his chest." (From amazon.com)

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I read this outrageous novel twenty years ago. It was a borrowed copy, and I've never seen it anywhere since. As a part of my project to reread things that I loved in the early 90s, I ordered this up from a second hand book dealer in the US. It arrived in Monday's post in a very handsome hardback edition and I can't wait to get back into this nasty, vulgar hunk of Southern Gothic.