A Donald Strachey Mystery, Book 7 - In Washington, D.C., to view the AIDS Memorial Quilt, gay P.I. Donald Strachey, his lover, Timmy, and Timmy's old friend Maynard from their Peace Corps days, are startled to discover a quilt panel for an ex-lover of Maynard. The trouble is Jim Suter isn't dead and was spotted in Mexico barely two weeks earlier. Suter is a golden-haired, back-room, right-wing operative. He's also a breaker of gay men's hearts ¿ with an angry, resentful cast of hundreds left in his dust.

Later in the evening, when Maynard is gunned down in his driveway in a seemingly random attack, a desperate note from Suter is discovered in Maynard's mailbox urging silence and warning of extreme danger. Police are called in but no one seems quite on the level: is there corruption in the local police? An ex-congresswoman, Betty Krumfutz, and subject of a recent messy public divorce, employed Suter and may have vandalized the Suter quilt panel. As Timmy's paranoia of deep cross-connections ratchets up, Strachey finds himself headed for Mexico in search of a possible drug cartel involvement. Written over a period of three decades, the Donald Strachey series authentically chronicles gay life as it unfolded across upstate New York, Washington and elsewhere. An author's note is included.