Lev AC Rosen (Lavender House) homes in on the 1950s gay community, offering a fresh homage to noir and private detective novels in Mirage City, his fourth outing featuring copturned private investigator Evander "Andy" Mills.
After being caught in a raid on a gay bar and kicked out of the San Francisco police force, Andy formed a detective agency and now it's thriving. He's found love with Gene, a bartender and manager at the Ruby, the club above which Andy's apartment and office are located, and he has close friends. A member of the local Mattachine Society, a secret group that advocates for gay rights, hires Andy to find three members who have disappeared after skipping meetings. The case will be difficult, since members don't use real names or pose for photographs. The investigation takes Andy to Los Angeles, where he grew up and where his mother still lives. Though she calls him every year on his birthday, they haven't seen each other in seven years. Andy's search for clues leads him to a secretive gay motorcycle club, a wealthy family that has retreated to their enclave, and a psychiatric clinic.
Andy's feelings of being an outsider intensify in Los Angeles, a city he no longer knows, as he wrestles with whether to tell his mother he is gay. Rosen excels at depicting the LGBTQ+ community's struggle for rights in 1953 as it becomes more visible. His detailed sense of history echoes Joseph Hansen's groundbreaking Dave Brandstetter novels in this superb series. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer