Once He Saw the Deep

Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap.

A judicial system lowlife talks Slater into investigating her smoking-hot hypnotist, and he soon finds himself put into trance and implanted with posthypnotic suggestions. But did the quack send him too deep? Murky impulses lead him to a shrink’s office and an ancient artifact that bears the image of Ishtar, pilfered long ago in the Middle East. With the provenance of the artifact up in the air and the police on his tail, Slater retreats to the desert for a while to sort things out. Meanwhile Pike gets caught on camera with a colleague, pushing Slater over the emotional edge. Trolling both the high end and the gritty bottom of LA, Slater infiltrates a private club for rich folks, and later finds himself cleaning carpets for minimum wage, macking on guys at every opportunity. As he sorts out the truth from the racket, all the while scuffling with thugs and dodging the cops, Slater has to figure out how to take down the dirtbags without taking himself down with them.

Freelance investigator Slater trolls the dark side of Los Angeles, rooting out insurance fraud, not afraid to use whatever means necessary to get things done, and not about to hold back with his fists. A queer antihero for a new age, Slater walks the line between ordinary life and the frayed fringes of society, keeping his balance with the back-channel support he gets from main squeeze Pike, business partner Max, and operatives Andy and Etta.