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by William Maltese |
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Book 1 ISBN: Prowler Books © 1999 $11.95 Out-of-Print |
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| Not only is Stud Draqual the CEO of Draqual Fashions, and a much-in-demand New York City haute-couture fashion designer of ladies' silk underwear, but he's this series' handsome, rich, and well-connected protagonist. In A SLIP TO DIE FOR, Book 1, sexually ambiguous Stud finds himself running a gauntlet made perilous by three men murdered in Draqual-silk lingerie, misdeeds on Wall Street and within the NYC book-publishing industry, as well as sinister Mafia involvement ... all amid cascading sexuality. | |||
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"...even with the distractions that include his charmingly screwed-up libido, Stud manages to get this genuinely engrossing multi-layered mystery and motives-for figured out in the end. Leaving the reader with not only the satisfaction of all strings neatly tied, but with the satisfaction of having come across a modern-day hero compelling enough to have us actually care what additional dangers and turmoil are undoubtedly still destined to complicate his already complicated life." -tgforum.com review "...what's not to like about Maltese who has no qualms about filling this gay-oriented mystery with interestingly less-than-drop-dead-attractive characters? I mean, when was the last time you read a book that included chubbies and their chasers? As for the main character's sexual confusion, what a relief to read about someone at least as equally screwed up as the rest of us." "I'm hooked! Bring on Book Two of this series, or you'll soon find me banging down the author's door to get at it!" The bullet-punched black silk slip was a sensuous lake beached across the shore of the corpse's muscled thighs; the exposed length of flaccid penis placid and calm on its raft of coarse dark hair. The silk was Draqualian, the end product of a sophisticated and very exclusive manufacturing operation in upstate New York where ravenous silkworms gobble mulberry leaves treated with a secret formula and then excrete gossamer strands of protein in every color of the rainbow. Draqualian silk is exorbitantly expensive, but Don deZinn could afford the exorbitantly expensive. As that cross-dresser, model, underground movie star, and high-class call-boy confessed to me on more than one occasion: "Stud, I've come a long way since I walked the streets and peddled my cock and ass to the highest bidder." There was one other interesting thing about that silk slip. It was one of mine. |
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by William Maltese |
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Book 2 an InsightOut Book Club selection A Lambda Literary Award nominee ISBN: Green Candy Press © 2003 $14.95 |
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| Three years in the writing, THAI DIED is the long-anticipated Book 2 of Maltese's popular Stud Draqual Mystery Series. Not only is the series' protagonist (CEO of Draqual Fashions and much-in-demand haute-couture designer of women's silk underwear) herein uprooted from NYC and plopped down in erotic/exotic Bangkok on a business trip, but he's unavoidably sucked into Bangkok's infamous underworld. Can Stud stay afloat in this cesspool rife with machinations that embroil not only business and social elite but also key players from Thailand's sexually charged underbelly? The author's intimate knowledge of the environment and subject matter resonates from every page. | |||
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"...a web of intrigue, skullduggery, stolen artifacts & Bangkok underworld sleaze that keeps the plot clipping along at a brisk pace." -rainbownetwork.com review "...some of the kind of exceptionally good writing that had one German critic, referring to William Maltese, after reading the author's German-language short story "Doppelmörder" (included in Lisa Kuppler's edited-for-Querverlag anthology QUEER CRIME), as "A Grand Master of the mystery genre." -tgforum.com review "Maltese's long history in book writing (he's been doing it for decades, a hundred books, under one pseudo or another to his credit), stands him in good stead in leading the reader, step by clear step, through this complex melange of murder and mayhem that includes fascinating insights into the sex-for-sale world of Bangkok's he/she community." -dragoncastle.net news Whoever slit Rhee Dulouk's throat should never have let the victim, second mouth still bubbling blood, reach Jeff Billing. Billing would have been gone in another day ... or two ... or three. As he'd left the Philippines, Borneo, Bali. As he'd left Australia, Cambodia, Burma. As he'd left Spain, France, Germany. For Billing, Thailand was just another stopover on the way to ... he never knew where ... just somewhere. Rhee Dulouk wasn't a particularly great lay. He wasn't even Billing's type. He was just another wham-bam-thank-you-man someone. One of many. A diversion. An exotic. Another notch on Billing's belt. One more fuck in Billing's ongoing fuck of the world. A keeper, beyond the first fuck, only because of a bit of pillow-talk that interested Billing, who knew a little something about Far-East antiquities. But not likely to keep Billing's interest for long. Therefore, Rhee Dulouk dead on someone else's doorstep would have been one thing. After all, there had been plenty of other bodies in Billing's life ... in the deserts of the Gulf, in the mountains of Iraq, in the back alleys of Afghanistan. Bodies left behind. Throwaways. Job-product. Rhee Dulouk dead on Billing's doorstep, though ... somehow ... made the death personal. Not only to Billing but to me. Though I sure as hell didn't know it at the time. |
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