The Night G.A.A. Died - Softcover

Ricardo, Jack

3.75

8 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312093535 ISBN 13: 9780312093532

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

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Driven off the force after coming out of the closet, former New York City police officer Archie Cain starts his life anew as a private investigator, probing the death of Gay Activists Alliance vice president.

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From Publishers Weekly:

Drawing on fact and fiction, Ricardo details gay society in early 1970s Manhattan in this well-crafted hardcover debut, which introduces fledgling PI Archie Cain, a former NYPD cop. Cain meets Max Harmony, vice-president of the Gay Activists' Alliance and an editor at a social policy magazine, in "the trucks"--18-wheel sex dens on the loading docks west of Greenwich Village. The pair stroll to an abandoned Hudson River pier, where Harmony is stabbed to death while in Cain's arms. Although the police arrest the victim's live-in lover, Cain decides to investigate on his own, tracing one lead to the organization behind a local flea market. After ferreting out CIA and FBI interest in Harmony, Cain is advised by his former NYPD boss to drop the case. While avoiding graphic sex scenes, Ricardo vividly illuminates the culture and mores of the book's milieu. Some elements of the quickly paced plot may be far-fetched, but the era and the issues--early gay-rights activism and the Cold War--are credibly depicted.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A first mystery that focuses on the way gays were way back- -specifically, in '71--when it wasn't so much a matter of one-night stands as ten-minute quickies in the warehouse district, on the docks, in dim doorways, and so forth. Out cruising one night, Archie Cain, formerly of the NYPD, is on the waterfront with Max- -when someone stabs Max in the back. Was it a member of the Gay Activists Alliance (Max was a vice president), a past lover, or...? There'll be suicide, pill-popping, gay-bashing, and--would you believe?--spying on gays by both the KGB and the US government before Archie finds love and the killer, though not necessarily in that order. A bit too fiercely gay for mainstream readers, though as a moody look back at the beginnings of gay liberation, Ricardo's debut rings true. It's the mystery plot overlaid on the facts that seems false. -- Copyright �1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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