DEVIL'S CHEW TOY

A meet-cute at a gay dance club leads to a dreamy night and a less dreamy sequel.

Even though he writes a Mates on Dates blog, Hayden McCall has had limited experience slipping dollar bills into the jockstraps of the go-go boys at Hunters. So maybe it’s his fault that Camilo Rodriguez responds to the tip by kicking him in the face. Camilo’s apologetic, bantamweight Hayden’s not seriously hurt (though his shiner is still shining when the curtain comes down), and they end up in Camilo’s bed in Columbia City. Everything’s perfect until the dawn’s early light, when two Seattle cops come calling for Camilo, whose truck they’ve found abandoned with the engine running, and Hayden realizes he’s not there. So many people saw Hayden getting kicked at Hunters that he’s not a serious suspect, but he wants to help. So he takes Camilo’s bull terrier, Commander, back to his place even though Ruthie Weiser, owner of the Orca Arms (think about it), has a strict no-pets policy that Hayden’s neighbor Sarah Lee is all too eager to enforce. More to the point, he joins forces with Camilo’s friend Hollister, a lesbian furniture maker with whom he instantly clicks, to track down his missing hookup, to the visible resentment of Hollister’s kryptonite partner, Mysti Cho. Miraculously, doubling the gay-best-friend cliché—neither Hayden nor Hollister is in danger of falling for the other—produces a fresh new take on the gay mystery, and Hayden’s first-person narrative is just self-deprecating enough.

Look past the routine mystery in Osler’s debut, and you’ll hear a welcome new voice.