A Simple Suburban Murder

The first in the series. Chicago area high school teacher Tom Mason discovers the body of a colleague in his classroom. To clear the main suspect, a former student, he and his lover, pro baseball player Scott Carpenter, delve into child homosexual prostitution and snuff movies. Zubro won the Lambda Literary Award in 1989 for best gay mystery for this book. Neil Plakcy, author of Mahu Surfer: A Hawaiian Mystery (An Alyson Mystery)

I've read each and every one of Mark Richard Zubro's Tom and Scott novels, but that says more about the shortage of gay mysteries than it does the talents of the unnervingly prolific Zubro.In the first of the series we meet highschool teacher Tom Mason and his celebrity ball player lover Scott Carpenter. When these two gorgeous hunks are not working out or having sex, they are solving mysteries--call them The Thin Men. Now I give Zubro this, he can construct a decent, fast-paced mystery. In fact, he is better at plotting a mystery than, for example, the much-revered Michael Nava (whose Henry Rios mysteries wouldn't challenge an eleven-year old Nancy Drew fan). But the writing is awkward, often stiff, and Tom and Scott are as lifeless as the mannequins they so resemble. And that's odd, seeing that Zubro is reasonably deft at sketching minor characters.A SIMPLE SUBURBAN MURDER is for me one of the strongest entries in the Tom and Scott franchise. The mystery is tightly written, the Chicago local realistically drawn, and it's an appealing premise: gay lovers and partners in crime-solving. A sort of Nick and Nick Charles. If we are grading on the Pass/Fail system, than Zubro easily passes