Name Games: A Mark Manning Mystery

Name Games: A Mark Manning Mystery

Mark Manning, once a prominent journalist at a major daily newspaper in Chicago, is now the owner and publisher of the Dumont Daily Register, the daily paper in a small Wisconsin city. Here the biggest news is the impending city council report on a proposed new adult bookstore zoning law, the upcoming election for Sheriff and the upcoming annual exhibition of the Midwest Miniatures Society. In a unique coup for the first-ever miniatures exhibition in Dumont, the "king of miniatures", Mr. Carroll Cantrell has agreed to come and judge the show's main event. But the exhibition itself is quickly shoved off the front page of the paper when Cantrell is found murdered in his room. To make matters worse, Doug Pierce, the local sheriff, is widely believed to be responsible. Pierce - a closeted gay man and friend of Mark Manning - had been carrying on an affair with Cantrell and was the last person seen leaving his room before the body was discovered. As conservative elements in Dumont attempt to exploit the murder - and the sheriff's association with the deceased - to their own ends, Manning, with the help of his lover, architect Neil Waite, his staff and friends, starts his own investigation of the murder. With Cantrell having led something of a double life with no end of potential enemies and the miniatures world itself being a hot bed of rivalries and closely held resentments, the truth begins to feel very elusive indeed. As public sentiment begins to swing and time running out for Sheriff Pierce, Mark must uncover some of this close-knit town's most deeply held secrets if he's to learn the truth in time. Mark Manning has not escaped murder and mayhem by moving to Dumont, WI, and taking over the local newspaper. Just as a regional exhibition of miniature furniture is about to begin, someone murders the visiting expert. Suspicion falls on the sheriff, a closeted gay, so Mark helps out. A well-written and engaging addition to the series. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. The murder of a world-renowned expert in the world of miniatures on the eve of Dumont's first miniature show spurs the informal investigation of Mark Manning, Craft's series sleuth and the gay publisher of the Dumont Register . Manning's interest becomes more than professional once his friend, the local sheriff, is "outed" as a gay man and made the chief suspect in the case by his rival candidate for his office, Deputy Dan. Meanwhile, the wily D.A. is eager to nail someone for the crime to ensure reelection, supported by Miriam Westerman, the gay-hating founder of a local feminist organization who once challenged Mark for custody of Thad, his teen nephew. With lover Neil, Mark's made a home for Thad, so the disruption of a local First Amendment/antiporn suit somehow bound up with the murder threatens to upset all aspects of the newspaperman's life. The newspaper staffers and the small town's doctor-beyond-reproach round out the cast of characters in a welcome addition to the ranks of gay mysteries. Whitney Scott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Even though gay reporter Mark Manning’s left Chicago behind, the editor/publisher of Wisconsin’s Dumont Daily Register finds life in the slow lane more eventful than he could have expected. Not only has local shopkeeper Grace Lord succeeded in attracting miniatures-king Carrol Cantrell, “a very big man in a very small world,” to Dumont to judge the exhibits in the Midwest Miniatures Society’s annual convention, but Mark and his close-knit allies are nervously watching the progress of an anti-porn bill spearheaded by opportunistic D.A. Harley Kaiser and that gay-baiting harpy Miriam Westerman, who almost wrecked Mark’s plan to adopt his orphaned cousin, Thad Quatrain, in Body Language (1999). The incongruous worlds of miniatures and pornography collide with a crash of tiny furniture when Cantrell is murdered—and soon after unmasked as the founding owner of Hot Head Video productions. Determined to shield barely uncloseted sheriff Douglas Pierce, who’d spent the preceding three nights with Cantrell, from suspicion as his killer, Mark keeps returning obsessively to the same short list of suspects—County Commissioner Dr. Benjamin Tenelli, who’s just warned that the local porn shop will frighten off tourists; Lt. Dan Kerr, the underling who wants Doug’s job; Miriam Westerman; and Grace Lord—and ignoring the obvious tip-offs: his steamy dreams and the school play Thad’s tried out for. Craft sprinkles clues of every sort so generously, in fact, that most readers will find his latest outing a hundred pages too long. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Michael Craft is the author of four previous novels, including the first three installments of the Mark Manning series: Flight Dreams, Eye Contact, and Body Language . Like his journalist hero, Craft once worked for a prominent Chicago newspaper and now lives in Wisconsin.