‘Living the Life’ No More
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“Mack Steel,” a leatherman with a male “slave” and numerous male playmates, is found stabbed to death, dressed only in frilly feminine underwear. This happens at the beginning of the Mr. and Ms. Global Leather (and Bootblack) Contest in New York City, which Mack was attending as a judge and where he was surrounded by rivals, exes, and enemies who all had motives to harm him. Earl Stemple, the harassed contest organizer, must decide whether to continue the weekend contest. He does, rather than face the wrath of numerous attendees.

The contest is invaded by two cops trying to solve the murder and an ambitious journalist trying to advance her career. What follows is a complex investigation within a community of characters who all have secrets and pseudonyms. Rebecca Feldblum, daughter of a progressive Jewish family and the only “out” lesbian officer investigating homicides, is paired with Dominick DeCosta, a very straight African-American man who seems to have all the prejudices of a Southern Christian upbringing. In the course of tracking down every clue, the two detectives discover that they actually work well together. Rebecca not only learns why Dominick respects her, she also reconnects with an ex-girlfriend who no longer regards cops as the guard dogs of patriarchal capitalism.

The list of likely suspects is pared down as more evidence comes to light, but the killer’s identity is not revealed until every sub-community in the diverse world of “leather” has been scrutinized. The most hilarious of these groups is the “Zodians,” followers of a series of fantasy novels about a strictly heterosexual tribe of dominant men who wear the fur of the animals they hunt, while their female “property” wears gauzy veils. (“Zod” is a thin disguise for another imaginary world with fans in the real one.) The unlikely author of the novels, who wrote them as a joke, is exposed during a confrontation with the “owners” of the “slave” she borrows for an evening of pleasure. Strangely enough, the revelation of the real origins of “Zod” doesn’t destroy the Zodian tribe. As a proud female Zodian explains, her lifestyle is satisfying enough that she doesn’t care who invented it, or why.

The wisdom of tolerating those whose kinks don’t match your own becomes clearer as the investigation closes in on the least tolerant and most dogmatic attendees. Mack is eulogized by a defensive admirer as a real leatherman who “lived the life.” Yet reality is subject to interpretation, and Mack is ultimately revealed to have been a chameleon who adopted whatever image would get him what he wanted at the moment. Mack’s inconsistency doesn’t really set him apart from the other characters, but his hubris—as in a Greek tragedy—is clearly the fatal flaw that brought about his downfall.

The title itself is a hint that the murder is a kind of inside job and not an attack on a sexual minority by narrow-minded outsiders, although a rabid group of protesters shows up regularly to picket the hotel where the contest is being held. The kinky world is revealed to be a microcosm of the general human circus. After the case has been wrapped up, Rebecca the detective thinks: “After all, they’re really not all that strange, those people. Just about as strange as … everyone else.”

At over four hundred pages, this novel does not include a single wasted word. As a good-humored farce combined with a whodunit, it can only be compared to the raunchy mysteries of James Lear, who praises the book in a cover blurb. It seems likely to be popular for years to come.

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Jean Roberta is a widely published writer based in Regina, Saskatchewan.