Mark Richard Zubro, File Under Dead

File Under Dead

Mark Richard Zubro

St. Martin's, August 2004, $23.95, 256 pp.

ISBN 0312280971

Although he likes being a high school teacher and interacting with the students as a gay man Tom Mason feels the need to work with gay teens, who need an adult's help to guide them through their various trials and crises. He volunteers at the Oscar Wilde Gay Youth services advising the teens who are suicidal, afraid to come out, and how to deal with their parents. There's a lot of backbiting and infighting between the staff and the head of the clinic Charlie Fitch, the executive director.

Tom tries to stay away from the politics of the situation but when he opens his file cabinet and finds Charlie's severed head, he becomes a suspect in a murder investigation. Eventually, the police arrest counselor Lee Weaver because his fingerprints are on the murder weapon (an axe) and had a motive as Charlie fired him the night of the murder. Tom counseled Lee when he was teen and he does not believe Lee is the killer. He intends to prove it since he has access to the people involved but before he can find Charlie's killer he finds two more murder victims.

Mark Richard Zubro has written an exciting amateur sleuth novel but FILE UNDER DEAD is so much more than that. It is a story about teens who do not know how to go against the norm in turns of their sexuality and the counselors who talk the more troubled ones out of considering suicide, and help them accept the consequences if their parents find out and can't cope with the truth. This fine mystery has heart giving readers an insider's view of the problems facing gay teens.

Harriet Klausner