HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Vermilion by Nathan Aldyne
Loading...

Vermilion (original 1980; edition 1980)

by Nathan Aldyne

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1564173,875 (3.6)7
Two misfit sleuths search for a street hustler's killer in this mystery series debut first published in 1980 and set in Boston's gay scene. Daniel Valentine is a gay bartender and former social worker. Clarisse Lovelace is his straight pal who works in real estate. They make an unconventional investigative duo--but sometimes unconventional is exactly what's called for. When Billy Golacinsky, a teenage street hustler, is found dead on the lawn of a homophobic lawmaker, everyone wants the case swept under the rug. Everyone except Valentine and Lovelace. Now they're combing through Boston's gay scene--from bars to bath houses--in a time before AIDS, yet full of other dangers.… (more)
Member:gaymystery
Title:Vermilion
Authors:Nathan Aldyne
Info:New York: Avon Books (1980), Edition: 1st Paperback, 192 pages
Collections:Your library, Gay male sleuth, Gunn, Slide, Markowitz, Read, Favorites
Rating:*****
Tags:Gay mystery

Work Information

Vermilion by Nathan Aldyne (1980)

Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 7 mentions

Showing 4 of 4
Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A dead young hustler is found on the lawn of a queer-baiting legislator. Boston's political and queer communities are up in arms about the matter, and police are bent on finding the killer—fast. Best friends Daniel Valentine and Clarisse Lovelace team up and hit the streets of Boston. Through a sinister underworld of bars and baths, bondage and blackmail, they're out to solve a very bizarre murder.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review
: Four w-bombs. It was 1981 and there was no need to torment me from beyond the grave! It was a tough enough year as it was.

Anyway. First, read this:
"I tell you, Lieutenant: twenty-five years ago, it was straight men that got me into trouble, and ten years ago, it was straight men that got me put in jail. It was a fag that got me out of jail and it was a fag that made sure I got a decent job. I got nothing against 'em. I'm not a fag, but I know what they know"—he gestured just as {the Lieutenant} had, with a cocked head—"that straight men are just trouble."
–and–
"...Wednesday night is dollar night and every queen in town with four quarters to her name shows up...that lobby emptied out like they were showing Dark Victory across the street...I'm not afraid of {the Lieutenant} for that, because I can take care of myself, and the time is past somebody like him can come in and push me around just because I'm gay. No judge in town would listen to him for more than five minutes. But like I say, it's the hassle. I don't like having to carry around {his lawyer's} card in my wallet all the time, and I certainly don't like the man coming around flashing his badge."

That, mes vieux, is the way we talked in 1979 when this story is set. It was pre-AIDS and the second quotes are from a bath-house attendant, though it's not like the institution of anonymous semi-public sex has vanished from the landscape (see: [Bath Haus])) it is a lot less prominent. A lot of things I thought were in the past, like homophobic politicians trying to keep QUILTBAG people down, aren't. But we have fought and fought and fought since the mid-nineteenth century to keep straight people out of our business and away from our basic rights to exist, to speak, to love and marry...so we just need to keep a-doin' it.

What this book does, by coming out again in the Twenties, is to educate the Millennials on the fact that the Boomers were just horny guys, too. The pop-culture references...Mamie Van Doren, Veronica Lake the afghan hound, handkerchief codes, smoking!! boozing!!, calling men who dress up as ladies "drags" and "a drag," the über-fey hairdresser whose professional name, nay entire beauty shop!, takes its names and inspiration from Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (which is what we called it then)...are going to be challenging for anyone under 50. My Young Gentleman Caller was...confused...a lot, and kept asking "But WHY is it funny?" So, well, audience defined.

But if it's in your frames of reference, if you're just a weentsy tidge nostalgic one reading day, pick this up and try it.
"Honey, I just got a pistol fired at my face!" She shoved the leather envelope under her arm. "In the immortal words of Mildred Pierce, 'Let's get stinko!'"

Let's!

It's $1.99 at the Kindle store: Follow the non-affiliate link! ( )
  richardderus | Apr 6, 2022 |
A rent boy's body is dumped in the grounds of a homophobic Boston politician's home. Under pressure from the politico, the police seem determined to pin the murder on someone, anyone, from the local gay community. Bartender Valentine and his BFF Clarisse Lovelace decide to find the real killer.

Fun piece of froth from 1980, so set in a very different world in so many ways. ( )
  Robertgreaves | Aug 19, 2020 |
Murder mystery in which a gay hustler is killed in Boston. The plot involves a property broker and a gay bartender who are best friends who are investigating the murder. The bartender and some others in the gay business community are getting leaned on by a local cop. Is so so as far a story goes. It truly is a mystery til near the end of the book as to whom committed the murder with various clues pointing us in different directions. Which ultimately turn out to be red herrings. Some of the characters lean a bit too much on stereotypes, the aging queen who sings in a piano bar, the clones, promiscuous sex that seems to have been more of the time then now. But that being said that it relies on stereotypes it does have a cast of characters, the aging lounge singer, a dominatrix that's always stoned, the promiscuous bartender, the "overworked" property broker. I read this series a number of years ago and am re-reading now. We'll have to see how the rest of the series holds up. ( )
  ChrisWeir | Oct 16, 2018 |
Ouch. Sometimes the beginning of a series isn't worth stretching for. I had read the fourth (and last) in this series and liked it well enough. Two amateur sleuths in Boston in the 1980s were entertaining, so I thought I'd see how the series started. My advice - don't. Overwritten, oversexed, over-stereotyped. As someone, I think Suzanne, says, a tree died for this. ( )
  ffortsa | Nov 30, 2017 |
Showing 4 of 4
added by gsc55 | editReviews by Amos Lassen (Nov 28, 2014)
 
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
For the two Daniels and Louis
First words
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

Two misfit sleuths search for a street hustler's killer in this mystery series debut first published in 1980 and set in Boston's gay scene. Daniel Valentine is a gay bartender and former social worker. Clarisse Lovelace is his straight pal who works in real estate. They make an unconventional investigative duo--but sometimes unconventional is exactly what's called for. When Billy Golacinsky, a teenage street hustler, is found dead on the lawn of a homophobic lawmaker, everyone wants the case swept under the rug. Everyone except Valentine and Lovelace. Now they're combing through Boston's gay scene--from bars to bath houses--in a time before AIDS, yet full of other dangers.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.6)
0.5 1
1
1.5 1
2 1
2.5
3 6
3.5 1
4 12
4.5
5 4

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,241,933 books! | Top bar: Always visible