Hot Spot

michael craft

During his distinguished career as a journalist, Mark Manning has seen it all--riots, murder, political corruption, and every manifestation of the dark heart of the human species. But even his proven emotional resources will be stretched when the home he shares with his lover, architect Neil Waite, and his ward and nephew, Thad Quatrain, becomes the site of one of the most daunting, taxing, and potentially dangerous of all human rituals--a wedding.

Roxanne Exner, best friend to both Mark and Neil, is having her nuptial ceremony at their house in the normally bucolic Dumont, Wisconsin, partly because Carl Creighton, her husband to be, is in the final weeks of his campaign for lieutenant governor of Illinois. For Roxanne, Dumont will afford some needed distance from the campaign, and for the city of Dumont, it will be the social event of the season. The wedding, despite everyone's fears, comes off with nary a hitch. The reception, however, takes a disastrous turn when a local matron, who happens to be a major donor to the campaign of Creighton's rival, is killed in what appears to be a freak electrical mishap.

Authorities soon discover that the electrocution was no accident. Then another shocker--Roxanne herself becomes the prime suspect. If Roxanne is ever to enjoy her honeymoon, and if Carl and his running mate are to stand a chance of election, Mark finds himself in a race against the clock to solve a most perplexing murder.

Genres mysterygayfictionlgbtgay fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 19,2002

Series

Mark Manning Mystery

Literary awards

lambda literary award,

This edition

Format: 288 pages, Paperback
Published: June 4, 2003 by Minotaur Books
ISBN: 9780312313647
ASIN: 0312313640
Language: English

About the author

michael craft

Michael Craft is the author of 20 published novels, four of which have been honored as finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. The first installment of his Dante & Jazz series, "Desert Getaway," was a 2023 MWA Edgars nominee for the Lilian Jackson Braun Award. The second installment, "Desert Deadline," was a Gold Winner of the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award, as was his 2019 mystery, "ChoirMaster." In addition, his prize-winning short fiction has appeared in British as well as American literary journals. Craft grew up in Illinois and spent his middle years in Wisconsin, which inspired the fictitious small-town setting of Dumont, used in many of his earlier books. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and now lives in Rancho Mirage, California, near Palm Springs, the setting of his current Dante & Jazz mystery series. In 2017, Michael Craft's professional archives were acquired by the Special Collections Department of the Rivera Library at the University of California, Riverside. Visit the author's website at www.michaelcraft.com.