Calculated Risk

In this chilling mystery, the terrifying specter of AIDS combines with blackmail and murder to overshadow the surreal world of California politics - and the secrets long buried in a senatorial candidate's past.
As the young, vital, and self-centered Charles returns - after escaping for a few hours to his local bar - to the home he shares with his dying lover, Randy, he rails at the injustice of his situation and wonders how much longer it will be before he is free. His reverie is interrupted - permanently - when a vicious young man steps from the shadows armed with a lead pipe. Though Frank Hastings at first believes the murder to be a random gay-bashing, he soon discovers a complex trail of motives and money leading into the political arena and finds he must step warily through a maze of not-so-veiled threats.

Its title notwithstanding, the latest entry in Wilcox's (Switchback) San Francisco-based Lt. Frank Hastings mystery series exhibits little risk and even a few miscalculations. Returning home from a gay bar to his AIDS-stricken lover, Charles Hardaway is fatally beaten. The police suspect random gay-bashing, but readers are aware that Charles's assailant knew his victim. In ensuing convoluted scenes, two cases of blackmail surface, the target of both being a golden-boy senatorial aspirant under the thumb of his shrewd wife and her power-hungry father. Unfortunately, readers know the who, why, where and how of the case not long after the story passes the halfway point, and the tepid conclusion adds no surprises. Annoying overwriting (Wilcox seldom uses a single word or phrase when two or three will do) and intrusive melodramatics ("In the two words... Hastings could hear the echoes of a lifetime lived in the shadow of society's contempt") further mar the plot's development. A subplot involving Hastings's attraction to Janet Collier, a female cop, goes nowhere; and the handling of Collier's relations with her male counterparts is woefully stereotypical.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Charles Hardway was looking for a respite from caring for his AIDS-stricken lover Randy Carpenter. That's why he was at Toby's bar having a glass of wine. That's why he left early--alone--but it didn't begin to explain why someone beat him to death with a lead pipe. Robbery? Gay bashing? Either way it's murder, and Lieutenant Frank Hastings, co-commander of San Francisco's homicide unit, assigns the case to detective Janet Collier, who discovers that Hardway and Carpenter were blackmailing someone to get AZT, the expensive drug used in AIDS treatment. Carpenter, himself within months of death, reveals their victim to be Harold Best, senatorial candidate and son-in-law of California's leading power broker, James Forster. Hastings and Collier know the trail leads back to Forster, but they can't find the right lead. Wilcox's Hastings series moves to a new, more complex level with this entry. Hastings is not just a homicide dick with a human side; he's an intricately drawn character who is struggling with his inability to separate his work from the rest of his life. Very few can compartmentalize their lives, Wilcox seems to be saying, and those who try seem doomed to fail. A haunting novel. Wes Lukowsky

Ambitious and talented California politician Harold Best pays a blackmailer to keep his homosexual past a secret. Someone murders the blackmailer, and Lieutenant Hastings must find the perpetrator, even if he must antagonize Best's rich and influential in-laws. Complications also arise when Hastings becomes interested in new detective Janet Collier. A fine procedural from the author of Full Circle (Tor, 1994).
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.