St Martin's Press (Hardcover), ISBN 0312205325
Dropping 32 storeys from a dinner party is not a good way to ensure a long life. Particularly if you hit something on the way down and end up scrambled on a busy Chicago sidewalk. ("Anybody found his right eye yet?") 

No one beats the mean streets with the same, sometimes sick but always quick witticisms of Mark Richard Zubro's popular detective Paul Turner. In Drop Dead, Turner and his partner, Buck Fenwick, try to unravel the complications of a famous gay male model's death. Was Cullom Furyk's fall from Chicago's Tribune Tower an accident or murder? 

Based on the flimsy evidence of one witness who might have seen something else, the detectives soon become embroiled in the seamy side of Cullom's life. They discover he was alternately the most popular and the most resented male model currently at the top of the fashion world. 

Two of Chicago's largest fashion houses share prime suspect honors in Cullom's death. Was Cullom about to break his contract with Guinevere and move to Veleshki and Heyling? Or should his death be blamed on something more prosaic, such as an argument with one of his former lovers? The deeper Turner and Fenwick delve into Cullom's life, the murkier the model's life -- and death -- becomes. 

Zubro keeps the pace and the tension mounting throughout the book and leads his readers down many blind alleys. Zubro also uses the mystery to compare and contrast the gay life styles of model and detective. In the process, the author displays a tenderness often missing from the mystery genre. 

A good book full of humor, some action and many puzzles, Drop Dead should satisfy most mystery readers, despite its rather gory beginning. 

Stephen Smith

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