The book opens with Steve Archer returning home in the morning having woken up in a strange bed, only to find the police at his apartment ready to arrest him for the murder of his boyfriend, Coy. The bulk of the book is a flashback telling how this all came about (which I did not realise for quite a while and was thus terribly confused), and the final 20-30 pages (out of 200) shows Steve looking for the real murderer to exonerate himself.

It's a 1960s attempt at gay noir but, quite apart from language and attitudes which would not pass muster nowadays, I found some characters so forgettable that I had no idea who they were when they re-appeared. I have good, albeit vague, memories from the early 1980s of the author's Dave Brandstetter series, which I might revisit some day but this stand-alone deserves its fate of languishing in obscurity despite several re-issues over the years. ( )

Good book overall but drags in placed. Written in the mid 60s. Has a black man living with a white man. The white man is killed and they start out blaming his lover. After he's cleared we go through a long list of whom it might have been. His ex-wife, his father, a deranged sailor, a local professor. All the people who have been sidelines in the book. Full of twists and turns if you can make it through. ( )