Review: Murder at the Paisley Parrot by Mark McNease

Title: Murder at the Paisley Parrot

Series: A Marshall James Mystery

Author: Mark McNease

Length: 291 Pages

Category: Murder Mystery

At a Glance: Mark McNease did a terrific job writing Marshall James’s story. The murder mystery was intriguing and suspenseful and made this a page-turner for me.

Reviewed By: Maryann

Blurb: Time waits for no one, including Marshall James. Now 58 and living in New York City, Marshall has outlived the expiration date he was given with a cancer diagnosis three years ago. He beat the odds but he knows he may not beat the clock. So he’s decided to tell a story or three about some murders he was involved in back in the day. The year was 1983. The bar was the Paisley Parrot in Hollywood, a gay, mob-run dive where people came to drink and few of them remembered the night before. Marshall loves his job as a bartender there. But one night, among the regulars, a killer arrives. Body by body, death by death, Marshall finds himself pulled into a web of murder, deceit and crime, with a psychopath waiting at the center of it all. Marshall falls for the cop who’s investigating him, not knowing if their relationship will survive or even if he’ll come out of this alive. Find out before last call comes around, in Murder at the Paisley Parrot.

Review: Marshall James, at the age of fifty-eight and having survived a bout of cancer, narrates this story, taking readers back in time to the year 1977 when he left his life in Indiana behind to head to Los Angeles, attracted there by the glitz and the gay scene in the big city. The Hollywood Spa was the hot spot for many young gay men then, a place where a guy could get a room and meet other like-minded men, and it’s there he meets Butch Reardon. Eventually they move in together, though just as friends.

As the years went by, Marshall worked and hustled and by the age of twenty-five, he’d earned his certificate of passage in bartending. Marshall took a job at a bar called the Paisley Parrot, which had been around since 1950 and, like so many bars, was owned by the mob. One evening, before the bar closes, Marshall meets a man by the name of Ben. He begins to think Ben might be the guy to change his life, but it wasn’t meant to be. A trip to the Parrot’s dumpster one night after closing time turned into a horrifying experience, and just as Marshall thinks he’s about to be arrested for murder, Detective Kevin McElroy came onto the scene. There’s something about Detective McElroy that intrigues Marshall, but a bartender and cop, plus an eleven-year age difference, wouldn’t be a good match.

Tired and stressed out, Marshall finds himself back at the Hollywood Spa, but even that doesn’t help. And right about the time he’s decided to throw in the towel, Detective McElroy shows up at the door to his room—wearing nothing but a towel. Marshall and McElroy become involved, and they also get caught up in a bizarre murder case that seems to surround Marshall.

There’s is a note of sadness to this story that comes along with Butch’s death. In1983, when AIDS left no survivors, his illness gives the reader a sense of hopelessness in the inevitable. There are many profound statements about AIDS in the storyline which reflect the fear of that era. “AIDS was unlike any other disease. It was not an opponent that could be defeated in the ring. It was not cancer. It was not lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. AIDS was the end.”

Mark McNease did a terrific job writing Marshall James’s story. There’s an abundance of historical detail which again shows the fine line between fact and fiction. I found Marshall and McElroy to be two solid and absolutely amazing characters with an undeniable chemistry. The murder mystery was intriguing and suspenseful and made this a page-turner for me.

You can buy Murder at the Paisley Parrot here:
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