The P-Town Murders.

Lisa Arsenault is a high-school English teacher who is involved in
several ministry campaigns to increase literacy.

This is the first in what will be a new series featuring Bradford Fairfax, a James Bond type of secret agent, who works for a covert organization run by the U.S. government. Fairfax, “Agent Red,” is sent to Provincetown, Massachusetts, by the American equivalent of “M” to abort a murder attempt on the Dalai Lama, who will be speaking there in an unprotected, open-air venue.

Ostensibly, Fairfax is in Provincetown to bury the body of his former lover, who, it turns out, was murdered. On his first night he discovers another body, seemingly dispatched in a similar manner. The body count mounts and connections are made to a particularly unsavoury bordello run by a rich and important celebrity who caters to a select clientele with secrets to hide. These are men who have not come out and who wish to protect their reputations as straight and at the same time have their highly individualized needs indulged.

P-Town (Provincetown), and its catering to the gay community, is the real hero of this novel. The author extols the quantity and quality of gay companionship, and the facilities available to expedite it to be found there, on every page. The murders are really just a backdrop to a celebration of The Life, as the author dubs the gay lifestyle. The plot around the Dalai Lama is particularly flimsy, and the added red herring of an approaching hurricane is never really developed.

The hero, Bradford Fairfax, was obviously initially conceived to be the definitive gay James Bond. His preoccupation with the good life—expensive clothes, wines, accommodation, etc.—in the opening pages is almost a parody of the materialism of the suave secret agent. However, his character seems to degenerate (or evolve, depending on your viewpoint) to one of maudlin sentimentality, jealousy, and dependency as the novel progresses. He also has a tendency to wax philosophical about the relative merits of gay and straight cultures, with gay trumping straight every time. James Bond simply gets on with the job.