Dead as a Doornail

In this insular mystery, Boston is reduced to a tiny enclave teeming with gay men, sexual tension and odd motives for the murder of a handsome young building contractor. Stan Kraychik (last seen in Time to Check Out, 1997) once cut hair and trained to be a cop, but the death of his lover has left him wealthy enough to purchase a crumbling brownstone on a desirable South End streetcorner. With riches, however, come troubles. Stan hires contractor Tim Shaughnessy to fix up the place. When Stan discovers Tim, who looks a lot like him, dead in his proud wreck of a house, Lieutenant Branco suspects that Stan was the intended victim. Meanwhile, out in the neighborhood, a coffee-shop employee named Chip buffs his pretty young body and draws Stan's attention. Chip is also propositioned by Myron, who owns a store, and photographed by Thorin, who owns another store and is married to Salena, a cutthroat realtor who happens to have been dead Tim's landlord. It turns out that nearly everyone managed to be in Stan's house sometime early in the morning, just before a sudden snowstorm hit and just before Tim was killed. Michaels isn't terribly concerned with realism as he puts a madcap spin on this mystery set in the urban homosexual milieu. But his plot tends toward narrative claustrophobia, and his ending is rushed, unprepared for and preachy. (Mar.)