Title: A Simple Suburban Murder
Series: Tom and Scott Mysteries: Book One
Author: Mark Richard Zubro
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin/Macmillan
Length: 224 Pages
Category: Mystery/Suspense
At a Glance: Despite some reservations, I felt this was an intriguing start to a fine mystery series and an above average debut for a now seasoned author.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: When a gay high school teacher starts investigating a colleague’s murder, he finds beneath the calm veneer of his Midwestern suburb a seamy underbelly of gambling, prostitution, and child abuse.
A Simple Suburban Murder is the book that started it all–the debut novel of Lambda Literary Award winner Mark Richard Zubro.
Review: Despite the title stating the contrary, there’s nothing at all simple about the murder in Mark Richard Zubro’s A Simple Suburban Murder, book one in the Tom and Scott Mystery Series.
Tom Morgan is a former marine turned high school teacher who inadvertently becomes embroiled in a murder investigation when one of his colleagues turns up dead in his classroom. Playing amateur sleuth with his lover, Scott Chapman, who happens to be a closeted, famous pro baseball player, Tom and Scott work against the orders of the police to track down the killer and, in the process, lead readers through the seedy underbelly of Chicago as well as its suburbs, where white picket fences are the facade of the extreme dysfunction that exists behind closed doors.
Penned in 1989, the story has a definitive dated feel to it which adds to its overall aesthetic—no cell phones nor internet to aid in the investigation, and a somewhat outmoded and often unflattering representation of its characters, crossing the line into caricaturistic at times—not blatantly unrealistic but rather more a welcome testament to the evolution of our anthropological norms. Zubro crafted a nice, if not exaggerated for maximum impact, mystery around these elements, and I got the feeling the author enjoyed pushing its envelope a bit. The mystery itself is filled with so many suspects that I had no real idea who the perpetrator was until the killer’s identity was revealed, which offered a poignant emotional touch to the story. The moral and ethical cross-hairs presented complement the horrors, building on the suspense of solving the murder as well as staging the rescue of a character who had a plausible and justifiable motive for seeing the victim dead—a victim no one seems sorry to see gone. Everything falls into place and, in the end, I was jarred by how deeply invested I’d become in the story’s resolution—probably because I wanted to raise the victim from the dead and then set him on fire myself, if I’m being honest.
Tom may be an ex-marine, but he’s not an unrealistic caricature of a movie vigilante who runs around guns hot, blowing away bad guys, which I appreciated. While that would’ve come in handy on a couple of occasions, no doubt, it would’ve been a cliched stereotype so I’m glad for its absence. Tom is not impervious to the danger he and Scott are exposed to, and fall victim to. As for Scott, being a closeted pro athlete was not out of character, especially in 1989, and his star status was a real asset at times. He’s a good guy who the author assigned super-heroic qualities to, on and off the baseball field, and I liked him quite a lot. The two men have been together for eight years already when the story begins, they’re an established couple who have experienced the first blush of love and are settled into and are invested in something deeper and more comfortable, but there’s a rather unsubtle domesticity to them that I felt conflicted with their commitment to keep their relationship under wraps. When they’re together, regardless of who they’re with, they came across as more than friends. But, that may also be owed to the difference in perspective offered by the nearly three decades of progress in social/sexual mores.
It’s probably unbecoming to compare author to author and series to series, but if you’ve read Joseph Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter series or Michael Nava’s Henry Rios series, it’s impossible not to use them as benchmarks of excellence in this category. Tom’s characterization misses the mark in terms of building a rapport with his audience—he has the sangfroid but lacks the mordant humor that make Brandstetter and Rios so appealing. But overall, despite some reservations, I felt this was an intriguing start to a fine mystery series and an above average debut for a now seasoned and award-winning author. I plan to follow up on the series with book two to see if some of the above-mentioned niggles smooth out as the author’s storytelling process matured. If you enjoy a good whodunit without a romantic sub-plot, this book fills the niche.
You can buy A Simple Suburban Murder here:
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