Missing

Harry Stoner is hired by an attractive woman to find her wealthy lover--but the bisexual man turns up dead, and Harry is convinced it is not a suicide--especially when the trail leads to old accusations of child molestation.

In his latest case, following Second Chance, Harry Stoner, the tough but soulful Cincinnati PI, discovers that detective work in the age of AIDS is a hard business. Soon after Cindy Dorn hires Stoner to find Mason Greenleaf, her bisexual boyfriend who has been missing for four days, Greenleaf is found dead in a seedy downtown hotel, an apparent suicide. If Greenleaf had been as happy with Dorn over the last four years as she believes, why would he kill himself? What had he been doing in the gay bar where he'd been spotted hours before he died? And what is the explanation for the blood that Stoner finds on the back seat of Greenleaf's car? In searching for answers, Stoner deals with a police force that has a history of harassing homosexuals. And he finds himself falling in love with his client. Valin's usually crisp writing sometimes plods here and Dorn's chronic helplessness annoys, but the villains aren't always evil and even the good guys show some flaws as the fragments of Greenleaf's tormented life come to light. Readers are left with an unexpected solution and an unusually affecting portrait of the victim and his times.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Cindy Dorn's lover, Mason Greenleaf, is missing, and she feels his disappearance may have something to do with a former lover. With no evidence of foul play, the police won't investigate, so Dorn hires Cincinnati private eye Harry Stoner. Before Harry's inquiries can yield results, the openly bisexual Greenleaf is discovered dead, an apparent suicide. The police are too eager to wrap up Greenleaf's death; to them, he was just another screwed-up queer. Stoner and Dorn aren't easily dissuaded. As Harry backtracks through Greenleaf's life, the name of Paul Grandin keeps surfacing. When Greenleaf was a teacher and Grandin a student, there was a molestation scandal, but that didn't end the contact between the pair. The deeper Harry probes, the more he comes to realize that Greenleaf was more the victim than the younger man. The eleventh Stoner mystery is as thoughtful as any in the series. Though Harry solves the case, he misses the motives every step of the way. Each of the key characters acts and reacts logically but never stereotypically. Even the most open-minded among us are burdened with prejudices and preconceived attitudes. Stoner learns this lesson the hard way. Wes Lukowsky