OUTBURST - A Todd Mills Mystery

In the middle of one of Minnesota's worst rainstorms, TV newsman Todd Mills--"the most visible gay person in Minneapolis"--is standing on the Stone Arch Bridge, waiting to meet a supposed blackmail victim with a hot story. Instead, he finds an about-to-be-murdered young gay cop named Mark Forrest, lured there by the same tipster/killer. So begins the investigation in this fourth Mills book from Zimmerman, one of the best of the current crop of writers of gay-themed mysteries. As in his previous Mills outings (Hostage, Closet, Tribe), Zimmerman shows us an often deadly urban world freighted with sexual tension. This time, involved in the police investigation is Todd's lover, Steve Rawlins, recently diagnosed as HIV positive--a fact that adds darkness to an already grim story. Rawlins becomes a target for the killer who has a grudge against gays and cops, the roots of which we begin to learn about gradually and with several sideways moves. Zimmerman creates a landscape perhaps a bit too dominated by variations on gay sexuality to be totally believable. But after decades of mysteries featuring nothing but straight sex, a little reverse imbalance isn't that hard to bear. --Dick Adler