For the seventh novel to feature gay, HIV-positive reporter Benjamin Justice (after 2004's Moth and Flame
), Edgar-winner Wilson moves Justice out of his usual milieu of West Hollywood, whose sexual politics past books in the series have explored in depth, to a crumbling resort hotel on the edges of the high California desert. Justice accepts an offer from Alexandra Templeton, a reporter friend, to spend a weekend at the Haunted Springs Hotel—site of the rape and murder of movie star Rebecca Fox 50 years before, the lynching (the last one ever in California) of the black handyman charged with the crime and the suicide of Fox's daughter in the same hotel room 25 years later. These tragedies are linked to a present-day murder and the danger Justice and Templeton soon find themselves in. The fresh setting does much to reinvigorate Wilson's familiar ingredients. The series has received three Lambda Literary Awards. (Mar.)
