Gossip

Ralph Eckhart meets "Thersites" on the Internet. The manager of a Greenwich Village bookstore and politically to the left, Ralph agrees to an F2F (face-to-face) meeting with Thersites in Washington, D.C., where his friend Nancy writes speeches for a popular woman senator. With his penchant for Shakespearean drama, Ralph should have seen the elements gathering for tragedy...or farce.
Thersites proves to be a young, attractive, and enthusiastic lover. He is also Republican, in the closet, right-wing, and the author of a tell-all book that spreads gossip about several Washington women, including a footnote about a lesbian affair between a speechwriter and a "happily married" senator. In a town where rumors can kill a career, such words may be fatal. And despite his passion, Ralph is disturbed by his new lover's politics...and then stunned at being charged with his murder.
Christopher Bram joins dark satire with chilling suspense as Ralph is arrested for first-degree homicide and becomes a "cause" in the gay community.

Bram, whose last novel (Father of Frankenstein, 1995) focused on Hollywood in the 1930s, makes a bold, imaginative leap with considerable skill in this new tale, taking on gay involvement in the '90s Republican comeback in Washington. East Village bookstore worker Ralph Eckhart, a vague, progressive fellow with a few powerful friends, a prominent gay activist and a senator's chief speechwriter among them, is gliding happily through life when he agrees to meet someone from an Internet chatroom and finds his core beliefs challenged. The date, Washington-based Bill O'Connor, is a good kisser, but he's also a rising Republican star, a right-wing journalist with a book trashing Hillary about to come out. Strange bedfellows indeed, Ralph and Bill hit it off, even going together to a Christian Coalition conference on the family where Bill is the featured speaker. But when Ralph discovers that his lover's book also accuses a lesbian speechwriter, his best friend, of an affair with her boss, he indignantly ends the relationship. Unfortunately, Bill is murdered soon after their breakup, and Ralph is jailed as the prime suspect. His activist friend Nick jumps to his defense, making his a cause c‚lŠbre exemplifying knee-jerk homophobia, but as the media machine cranks up in his favor, Ralph is shaken to discover that Nick is in fact also an FBI informer, and the one who turned him in. Freed before the case comes to trial, Ralph then unwittingly stumbles on the trail of the real murderer and has to face the consequences. It's hard to bring this sort of story off with such a low-key protagonist, and the plot has more than a few idle moments. But ultimately this is a closely wrought psychological portrait of both a decent man and the sharply divided gay world he inhabits. In hindsight, the story seems at least as subtle as it is slow. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Bram recovers from the disappointing Father of Frankenstein (1995) with his most absorbing book ever. Visiting his friend Nancy in Washington, New Yorker Ralph Eckhart honors a date with a previously cyberspace-only buddy, Bill. The two click sexually and start a long-distance relationship. But Ralph discovers conservative journalist Bill is about to publish a book trashing liberal women in Washington and, in a footnote, alleging a lesbian affair between a speechwriter and a senator--a pair that could only be Nancy and her boss. Ralph tells Bill off, Bill tries to make amends by coming out on national TV, and suddenly Bill is murdered, leaving behind a recorded denunciation by Ralph on his phone answerer. What follows is the stuff of high melodrama, as Ralph becomes an unknowing pawn in nasty political games in which, Ralph learns, gay liberal friends have used him even more callously than have evil conservatives. With a cast full of credibly conflicted characters and his smoothest writing to date, Bram's ethical thriller is a powerful, compelling performance. Ray Olson