Body Language
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4.5 • 8 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A gay Chicago reporter returns to his Wisconsin hometown—and a morass of lust, lies, and lethal family secrets in this "neatly twisted" mystery (Booklist).
An unexpected windfall has given burned-out Chicago journalist Mark Manning the chance to reconnect with his boyhood roots. With the blessing of his lover, Neil, he leaves the Windy City to return to Dumont, Wisconsin, to take over the town paper. His long-awaited family reunion is cut short when his cousin Suzanne is bludgeoned to death just before Christmas dinner. Before she dies, she whispers something to Manning: the name of her son.
Was she expressing a mother's dying wish for the future welfare of her child? Or revealing the identity of her murderer? When Manning ends up in the local law's sights, he's suddenly racing against time to clear his own name and smoke out a killer. With no lack of suspects, from a troubled homophobe to a lesbian activist to a housekeeper, the clock is ticking on a story that could be the biggest of Manning's career—if he lives long enough to write it.
Body Language is the third book in Michael Craft's Mark Manning series, which begins with Flight Dreams and Eye Contact.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One of crime fiction's smuggest characters, gay journalist Mark Manning, returns (after Eye Contact) in another precious tale. This one concludes with a solution that manages the dubious achievement of being both painfully obvious and singularly implausible. Mark quits his newspaper job in Chicago to take over a small-town newspaper in Dumont, Wisc., where he spent part of his childhood. His lover, architect Neil, stays in the Windy City while Mark sets up shop, hires a hunky associate, buys back the family mansion and reacquaints himself with his distant family. But events turn tragic when his successful cousin Suzanne is murdered at a dinner party also attended by his mentally challenged cousin, Joey, and Suzanne's surly, homophobic son, Thad. A good-looking local cop is soon sifting through suspects. Manning is pretty much insufferable, especially as Craft packs the book with an improbable number of handsome men. And though the "hidden in plain sight" ending trick is an old and trusty mystery gambit, it requires more narrative skill than this author manages to summon.
