Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery

✍ Scribed by Zubro, Mark Richard

• Book ID: 108501720
• Publisher: Macmillan
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 164 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0312266839

✦ Synopsis

Craig Lenzati, the rich and powerful CEO of Chicago's answer to Microsoft, is found brutally murdered with stab wounds all over his body. The murder is reported anonymously, and a quick and quiet resolution to the case is demanded by City Hall. Meanwhile, the list of suspects is almost endless and that along has the powers-that-be breathing down the necks of Chicago Police Detectives Paul Turner and Buck Fenwick. But as the two struggle to untangle the case and find the killer, they soon learn that the killer has only just begun.

From Publishers Weekly

Lambda award winner Zubro has received just praise for his gay mysteries (One Dead Drag Queen, etc.), but his latest isn't going to further his reputation. Within 24 hours Chicago software tycoons and business partners Craig Lenzati and Brooks Werberg are murdered, each stabbed repeatedly. Both men were rich nerds; one was gay. Detectives Paul Turner (the gay father of two boys) and Buck Fenwick (a macho type who secretly writes poetry) take on the two cases. As they painstakingly strip away layers of computer code, the detectives discover that the murder victims were playing a childish sex game. Lenzati and Werberg each offered sex partners money and kept score, their way of gaining nerd revenge for years of social and sexual ineptness. As Turner and Fenwick crack wise and interview copious hired lovers, mysterious gifts of chocolate begin to arrive on Turner's desk, as do threatening messages on his computer screen. A cross-country killing spree targets policemen with good arrest records. The cop murders and the two dead software magnates might just be connected. Or they might not. The verbal interplay between Turner and Fenwick becomes tiresome and contrived. Since weak jokes and labored banter take up most of the book, the identity of potential killers requires the reader skipping backwards to find their initial appearances. It works, but only just.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The Windy City's answer to Microsoft has at its helm two computer supergeniuses. When one is found brutally murdered, only to be followed by the other, gay Chicago police detective Turner and his partner, Buck Fenwick, must shoulder the burden of reducing a list of suspects only slightly smaller than the entire roster of known felons in the Chicago area. Complicating matters is a journalist's surmise that a serial killer of cops is on the loose, working his way westward from the East Coast, with Chicago his probable next major stop off of I-90. Combining murder and microchips, rapid-fire patter zings across the pages in this latest Turner mystery, which showcases Zubro at the top of his form. Sure to please present fans and win new ones. Whitney Scott
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