Idyll Threats

July 20, 2015
Set in 1997, Gayle’s well-written but tame first mystery introduces Thomas Lynch, who has left his action-packed job as a New York City detective to become the police chief of rural Idyll, Conn. But Idyll turns out to be far from idyllic for this closeted gay cop. When Lynch propositions a man he has stopped for speeding and their tryst ends badly, he realizes that the other man could report him and ruin his career. The sympathetic Lynch will show poor judgment on more than one occasion. Meanwhile, the fatal shooting of Cecilia North, a pretty local who recently graduated from college, gives Lynch a real case to work on. The workmanlike plot trots out and discards a series of plausible suspects until the unmasking of the killer. One hopes that the capable Gayle (My Summer of Southern Discomfort) will offer a stronger story line in the sequel. Agent: Ann Collette, Rees Literary Agency.

Starred review from August 1, 2015
After a devastating loss as a New York City cop, Thomas Lynch decides to start over as small-town police chief in Idyll, Connecticut. But small towns have big secrets, and when Cecilia North's corpse is found on the town's golf course, more than one resident has cause to withhold information about the night she was killed. Lynch is among them. He saw Cecilia hours before she died, but to explain the circumstances, he would have to tell his officers that he is gay. Instead, he runs himself ragged trying to point investigators in the right direction without admitting that he has firsthand knowledge of the events leading up to her death. Lynch is a deeply compelling character. He knows that he is compromising the investigation by not coming forward, but he can't make himself say the words. The book is set in 1997, the same year that Ellen DeGeneres appeared on the cover of Time announcing, Yep, I'm Gay. Readers will want to see how the next two decades treat this intriguingly complex cop, should this fine crime debut launch a series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)