The Bell in the Fog
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4.6 • 14 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Bell in the Fog, a dazzling historical mystery by Lev AC Rosen, asks—once you have finally found a family, how far would you go to prove yourself to them?
San Francisco, 1952. Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has started a new life for himself as a private detective—but his business hasn’t exactly taken off. It turns out that word spreads fast when you have a bad reputation, and no one in the queer community trusts him enough to ask an ex-cop for help.
When James, an old flame from the war who had mysteriously disappeared, arrives in his offices above the Ruby, Andy wants to kick him out. But the job seems to be a simple case of blackmail, and Andy’s debts are piling up. He agrees to investigate, despite everything it stirs up.
The case will take him back to the shadowy, closeted world of the Navy, and then out into the gay bars of the city, where the past rises up to meet him, like the swell of the ocean under a warship. Missing people, violent strangers, and scandalous photos that could destroy lives are a whirlpool around him, and Andy better make sense of it all before someone pulls him under for good.
Dive into the full Evander Mills series:
Lavender House
The Bell in the Fog
Rough Pages
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rosen's gripping second investigation for Andy Mills, San Francisco's "only queer detective" (after 2022's Lavender House), takes place in the city's early 1950s underground gay scene. Andy, who was fired from the SFPD when his superiors learned he was gay, is still struggling to find clients for his private detective agency. One afternoon, James Morris, a captain in the Navy and Andy's former lover, walks into his office. Though Andy is still scarred by their breakup (James left seven years earlier without saying goodbye), the PI can't afford to turn down work, and soon learns that James is being blackmailed with explicit photographs after a tryst with a young man named Danny. With his Navy career in the balance, James asks Andy to retrieve the photos and negatives for him. Andy's search takes him on a dizzying tour of San Francisco's gay and lesbian clubs, but Danny is nowhere to be found, and flashes of Andy's own past threaten to muddy the investigative waters. Andy is an appealing—if melancholy—protagonist, and Rosen's candid portrayal of the casual cruelties perpetrated on queer people in the 1950s provides a novel and edifying foundation for a traditional mystery. Readers will be ready for the next Mills adventure as soon as this one ends.
