Lev Raphael, Hot Rocks

Hot Rocks

Lev Raphael

Perseverance Press, Apr 2007, $14.95, 216 pp.

ISBN 1880284839

After a week in the Caribbean with his life partner Stefan Borowski, a writer in residence at the State University in Michigan, English composition Professor Nick Hoffman plans to relax until the semester starts. He finds out that is not to be when he enters the steam room in Michigan Muscle. There he sees Vlado Zamaria just sitting there not moving a muscle; the man is dead.

Since he found the body, he is a person of interest to the police. Juno, a professor who Nick is physically is attracted to even though he is gay, wants to help him find the killer. Both of them like playing detective and they want to solve the murder. The first person Nick talks to is the victim's wife who doesn't seem broken up that her husband is dead. They find a box full of pictures of him copulating with different women. Also in the box is an expensive woman's watch. Besides the women there are plenty of suspects including the trainers who he treated as his servants, a former trainer who refused to have sex with Vlado so he fired him, and a member of Michigan Muscle who had a secret he wanted kept quiet.

Lev Raphael is one of the most intellectual authors writing academic mysteries and he uses his brain power to have his character, who is also brilliant, interview suspects, piecing together bits of information to get the real picture of who the killer is. Lev Raphael is a writer who imbues his protagonist with a dry wit which makes him see real even as he investigates a homicide in which the police hone in on him.

Harriet Klausner