For the Love of a Green-Eyed Piano Player

Michael Fowler is doing his best not to fall in love with Steve Lopes, a piano player with eyes as green as willow shoots and hair the color of polished chestnuts. Love is just not in the cards for an actor whose career is on the rise, and who has just landed the triple part in Shakespear´s "Hamlet;" the role that Shakespear himself is likely to have played. But Steve is really hard to get out of his head, and, he fears, his heart. Then there is the fact that Steve wants him to do an ´environmental´ performance, playing his non-existant cousin Toby in order to solve some long-term family problems. Steve was raised by his beloved Aunt Minerva who, it appears, has imaginary relatives as well as real ones. And the real ones want to get their hands on her money. To top it off, there is a serial killer who has been murdering Gay men, and the killer has Michael at the head of his hit list. Set in the 1980s in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Mason Powell´s Gay romantic crime novel is a tightly plotted tale of murder and madness, of theater and people whose lives put the theater to shame. It is also a tour of places as they were and characters as they are likely to remain in California: a state which holds its zanies to be its greatest natural resource. "If you love a good love story, you will love this novel. If you love a good mystery, you will keep turning the pages. If you loved "Tales of the City," you will want to return to the golden days of the 80s in San Francisco with this book." ---Diana L. Paxson Author of "Priestess of Avalon"