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After the Horses: A Dan Sharp Mystery
After the Horses: A Dan Sharp Mystery
After the Horses: A Dan Sharp Mystery
Ebook289 pages4 hours

After the Horses: A Dan Sharp Mystery

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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2016 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Mystery — Shortlisted

Dan Sharp scours Toronto’s seamy underbelly after the murder of a notorious nightspot owner, and finds his own life on the line.

When Yuri Malevski, owner of notorious country-and-western bar The Saddle and Bridle, is found dead in his Parkdale mansion, missing-persons investigator Dan Sharp is reluctant to interfere in what he sees as police business. At first, Malevski’s sleazy lifestyle and shady associates make the murder look like an open-and-shut case, but Dan reconsiders after being approached by a couple who say Malevski was killed by cops over protection money.

When vulnerable people who had frequented the dead man’s bar begin to disappear, Dan feels compelled to jump in feet first. Following a lead, his investigation takes him into the heart of Toronto’s gay community, where he confronts its down-and-outs — transients, drug dealers, and con artists — and soon finds his own life threatened as his search brings him closer to a killer.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherDundurn
Release dateNov 14, 2015
ISBN9781459731332
After the Horses: A Dan Sharp Mystery
Author

Jeffrey Round

Jeffrey Round is the author of numerous books, including the Lambda Award–winning Dan Sharp mystery series and the stand-alone mystery Endgame. He lives in Toronto.

Read more from Jeffrey Round

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Rating: 3.6666666666666665 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is the fourth novel in the series featuring Toronto private investigator Dan Sharp. In this book he is investigating the death of a prominent nightclub owner with alleged corrupt connections. Dan is hired by a lawyer to investigate the murder despite the ongoing criminal investigation. This adds a layer of complexity – Dan not only has to find the killer, he has to question the motivation of his client. Dan, his client and the victim are all gay. The investigation takes Dan through Toronto’s different gay venues, quarters and cultures and his personal life becomes mixed up in the investigation. Many of the characters are also immigrants and so we see the city from their perspective. Dan is quite reflective on issues of social justice and the sometimes conflicting beliefs of minorities.I have a couple of reservations about the book. Dan is an interesting character but he has a lot of views, on everything from traffic flow to the intergenerational housing crisis, and he sometimes expresses them at length when they don’t really add anything (you suspect these are the hobby horses of the author rather than the character). I didn’t find the relationship between Dan and his teenage son convincing. Dan speaks to him like a school counsellor. There is no sense in their dialogue of the distance between what a person means, and what they say, when love or fear or just plain tiredness get in the way. A potentially interesting subplot fizzled out rather quickly. And just as I was convinced that Dan was a sensitive and caring guy (albeit an opinionated one) he goes and checks his phone during a funeral!Still, it’s very readable and engaging. I found some of the minor characters interesting and would have liked to know more about them. The story kept me guessing till the end. Okay, so a significant clue came from a minor character speaking in riddles, and the police were amazingly co-operative with Dan, but I’d say those are both permissible within the rules of the genre.All in all, it’s an entertaining mystery with a strong contemporary setting. *I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley

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After the Horses - Jeffrey Round

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