Sorry Now?

Hostilities between gay and straight communities as well as the former group's internal differences are the predominant themes in this fast-moving Chicago-based police procedural. The father of two boys, one with spina bifida, Paul Turner juggles his duties to his family, his job as a police detective and the fact that he is gay. After the daughter of Bruce Mucklewrath, an arch-conservative California preacher turned senator, is shot to death before her father's eyes, the killers ask him, ``Sorry now?'' But when Turner and his partner try to question members of Mucklewrath's organization, they are stonewalled. Turner resists the suggestion that a radical gay organization is behind the murder--until a friend, a reporter for the Chicago Gay Tribune , tells him that a previous criminal act against another homophobe was also accompanied by the message ``Sorry now?'' Then an indigent, AIDS-infected informant claiming to know who slew the girl turns up dead, Paul receives threats against his sons, and his superiors crank up the pressure. Zubro's ( The Only Good Priest ) blend of personal and political concerns makes this story compelling and even urgent. (Sept.)