Cirque du Slay

January 15, 2024
Hayden McCall, a Seattle middle school teacher and gay dating blogger, gets involved with the pansexual crew that runs a circus troupe. Magician Kennedy Osaka, the new artistic director of Mysterium, a contemporary circus, has big plans to make it more exciting. Meanwhile, Hayden and his friend Hollister are treated to tickets to a VIP preview show by his neighbor Sarah Lee, Kennedy's old college roommate, who can't make it herself because she's getting ready for a fundraiser for Bakers Without Borders, where Kennedy has agreed to perform the next night. Before the world can see whether the magician's onstage chops are matched by her ability to herd Mysterium's cats, her leadership is cut short: Sarah Lee finds her in her room at the Park Olympic Hotel, stabbed to death with a pair of designer scissors. The hotel's security videos prove unhelpful, and the cops' interest in the case is limited to suspecting Sarah Lee, so Hayden and Hollister decide to investigate on their own. Eventually their suspicions coalesce around three groups of possibles. Cowgirl comedian Kit Durango and hair-bun acrobat Yaz Smilova are the most likely candidates to succeed Kennedy as Mysterium's director. Boris and Sasha Smilov, Yaz's father and brother, are respectively the troupe's owner and its head of operations. And Vlad Halep, along with Florin, Marku, and Stefan, his partners in the Romanian acrobatic group Adrenalin!, would catch anyone's eye--especially Hayden's, since he's increasingly certain that Venezuelan dancer Camilo Rodriquez is never going to requite his love. Since Hayden and Hollister's main approaches to sleuthing are making wrong guesses and spreading rumors designed to goad the killer into striking out at them, readers shouldn't expect a densely plotted mystery. Like Mysterium, it's best approached as an LGBTQ+ circus whose inclusiveness extends to the dead. A big-tent extravaganza in more ways than one.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 15, 2024
Hayden, a slight, ginger-haired, gay middle-school teacher, and Hollister, a brash, Black, lesbian furniture designer with a mohawk, are unlikely best friends. But they have the backs of their friend Burley and her coworker Sarah Lee when Sarah Lee is arrested for the murder of her college friend, Kennedy Osaka. Kennedy had just been designated artistic director of Mysterium, an upscale adult circus, and had agreed to do a benefit performance for Sarah Lee's charity. When Kennedy doesn't show up, Sarah Lee storms to her hotel only to find her stabbed with scissors. Hollister calls in Jess, a trans lawyer who could be Hayden's twin, to defend Sarah Lee, and Hayden strategizes motive with his 91-year-old friend, Jerry. In between trying to get Hayden a date, the enlarged family of choice investigates, visiting the Mysterium site under several guises. They suspect everyone in the Mysterium troupe, from Romanian acrobats to a western-style rope performer to the star trapeze artist. Chock full of unconventional characters, both LGBTQ+ and not, this entertaining cozy is heartwarming in the characters' caring for one another.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.