Shadow Puppet

Lambda Award-winning writer Jeffrey Round should be a household name not just in households that value gay detective fiction, but outside them as well. I, who am not a connoisseur of or an inveterate fan of detective fiction, don’t read Round merely for his tricks of suspense. I value him for his true literary motive: an exploration of human relationships within the circumscription of milieu, circumstance, and character — in other words, the exigencies of our lives, especially of gay lives, that (as Edmund White puts it) express the introspective advantages of the “outsider, of the foreigner and of the pioneer.’ * — Keith Garebian, award-winning author of William Hutt: Soldier Actor *
Round dramatically shows how homophobia, or at least apathy, can blind authorities to a monster victimizing a vulnerable community. * Publishers Weekly *
It’s a cracking good tale … perhaps the best in the Sharp series. * Booklist *
The story of Toronto’s Gay Village serial killer was far too macabre and mind-boggling not to be turned into fiction, and Jeffrey Round has done it justice. It’s the sixth of his series featuring P.I. Dan Sharp and the best of the bunch so far. He’s changed bits and names, and certainly the plot line has a new twist but, this is as good a whodunit as we’ll see this year. * Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail *