Reviewed by Dan
TITLE: Dying to Play
AUTHOR: Mark Zubro
PUBLISHER: ManLove Romance Press
LENGTH: 263 Pages
BLURB:
Gay PI saves the team.
Gay PI Mike King is called upon to investigate what is happening to a minor league baseball team. He follows the trail of drugs, death, and destruction through the deadly dangers he finds in the rural community. Through the lives of the hot studs involved in baseball, he has to navigate to find the truth about what is happening to them and their dreams.
REVIEW:
As many of you who read my reviews might have noticed, I’m getting further and further from the light fluffy, boy meets boy romance books, and venturing instead into m/m mysteries, sci-fi/fantasy and some really dark and twisted stuff. This particular book falls into the m/m mysteries, and I think you will enjoy it.
Dying to Play is the first in a new mystery series about gay PI Mike King. Mike King is portrayed as a big strapping, hot hunk of a detective. A former college baseball player turned private investigator, Mike made a name for himself with several gay related investigations and the rescue of a very wealthy man’s son. For saving the son, he now has an original signed Picasso on his office wall. He also has a penchant for leather bars, which isn’t really addressed in this book. We are teased in this book with a snippet of how Mike met one of his crew, Jerry Hakon, “in the deepest dungeon of the most dangerous gay leather bar in Australia. At the time he’d (Jerry) been fisting the star of Australia’s World Cup soccer team.” Hopefully we’ll get more details of that side of Mike and Jerry in the future?
In Dying to Play, Mike has been approached by the owner of a minor league baseball team in Butterfield, Wisconsin. The players have been getting death threats and someone seems out to sabotage both the team and its owner. They’ve also tried to burn down the new stadium, and no one knows who “they” are.
Mike agrees to go undercover and pose as a new player on the team to find out what is going on. Right from the start things seem strange. There are rumors that some of the players are being paid to help other teams by throwing easy pitches, etc. The has-been player who is playing with the team after a drug use court case, is supposedly using again. And the town is sharply divided between two camps, and have been since the 1800’s!
Mike soon learns that most of the townspeople know exactly who he is, but the club owner insists he stay undercover. It isn’t long before he starts getting death threats, which quickly turn into murder attempts! What is up with this small town and who is trying to kill him?
I loved this mystery. It was a true whodunit all the way until the end of the book. Mark writes an excellent mystery. Of course, there are a couple hot guys who find their way into Mike’s bed, but unfortunately the sex is mostly fade to black and off screen 🙁 I’d really, really like to see some of the stuff alluded to, i.e. the fisting scene mentioned above, and the guy who liked to be peed on in Montana, actually get some in depth written space in Mark’s books!
But, the light sexual content is more than made up for by the suspense which keeps you reading right up to the last page. I highly recommend this book, and its cast of characters. I still can’t get the old “George, George, George of the Jungle” and “Watch out for that tree” lines out of my head since reading the drag queen’s name of Georgia De’Jungle (with an e)! Even though Mark told me the name was a suggestion of a friend of his…I still think he is a bad, bad man for putting that song in my head! 😉
I look forward to reading and reviewing more Mark Zubro books in the future! I can’t wait to see the further adventures of Mike, Duncan, Georgia and Jerry!
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
[…] Because it is well written and I really liked the story overall, I’m going to recommend this book to anyone that likes a mystery, particularly anyone who likes one that ties in some real life events, mixes them up with some poetic license, and leaves you guessing right up until the last page. I would highly recommend you read the previous book in the series Dying to Play first, before you read this one for the background on the characters. If you are interested, that review is here. […]