| This
anthology has been included in the list
of finalists for the 2008 Lambda
Awards. There's a
similarly gritty story about cops and
criminals in Crossed Wires, one
of the two stories in Fiona's Torrid Teaser from
Whiskey Creek Press - Torrid.
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Any Means
Necessary
in Men of Mystery
Haworth Press
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'Living
outside society's boundaries gives a man the
freedom to do whatever—and whomever—he
pleases.'
Queer sex
has always been dangerous—the physical act
shared between men has been punishable by
humiliation, imprisonment, violence, and death.
But as gays move into the mainstream, is queer
sex losing its edge? Has the gritty glamour of
being a sexual outlaw faded? Men of Mystery
presents 16 stories that abandon the sanitized
version of homosexuality to drive down darker
alleys searching for crimes of passion and hard
sex that still carries a threat. You'll meet
dirty cops who harass their suspects, shifty
criminals who'll leave you aching for more, Mob
types who live with the constant threat of
death…even ghosts from beyond the grave who
demand a whole new definition of pleasure. Hard
guys, tough guys, rough guys who live in a
down-and-dirty world where a real man takes what
he wants whenever he wants it.
The
anthology includes Fiona's story Any Means
Necessary, a gritty but wry tale of bent
cops - in every sense of the word. When Hughes
and Mackay take the wrong guy in for their
special brand of questioning, there's an
unexpected outcome for both themselves and their
suspect.
"...blends
the tropes of noir and erotica very skilfully,
evoking a world of shadows, betrayal and
unpredictable desire."
Joel Lane,
author
"Sammy?
Nah, not Sammy, Mr Hughes. Ancient history, Sammy
is - has been since Christmas." The old man
rambled on, words muffled round the permanent
half-mast cigarette spilling tubes of ash down
his grubby mac. Words that included 'Colman' and
'new kid' and 'pretty boy', but Hughes had
already stopped listening to the flood.
"You
sure, Paddy? It's important." Important
wasn't the word. More like vital, or desperate,
or devastating. More like his bloody career on
the line, and Mackay's too if the old guy was
right. If only they'd checked their facts first,
instead of storming in mob-handed. If only they'd
played the good guys for a change.
"Course
I'm bleedin' sure. Aren't I telling you? You only
got to go round the clubs come Friday night -
soon see for yerself." He removed the
fag-end long enough for a noisy swig from his
beer and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
"Surprised you didn't already know, Mr
Hughes. Been common knowledge on the streets for
months. Colman never keeps the same boy more than
six months. Thought you knew that."
And we
should have known, Hughes thought. Should have
known, should have checked, should have bloody
thought for a change. They'd been tracking Colman
for months, convinced he had a finger in
virtually every dirty pie in the city, from fraud
to racketeering to full-blown organised crime.
But the wily bastard was too smart for them,
moving on, never leaving a trail, laundering
every last tuppence through a maze of offshore
accounts convoluted enough to baffle a homing
pigeon with GPS. But he did have one weakness,
did Colman - he liked boys. Rent-boys, usually,
in any shape or size as long as they were clean
and pleasing to the eye, and legal, if only just.
And young Sammy had been the latest in a long
unsavoury line and they'd been so intent on using
him to trap his powerful friend that they hadn't
stopped to check the facts. He kicked savagely at
the leg of Paddy's bar stool, slopping the old
man's pint half way to his mouth.
"Oi!
What d'you go and do that for? Said I'd help and
I'm helping, aren't I?
© 2004
Fiona Glass
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