For writers my age, this book has special resonance. The time is the end of the 1980s. The author and the narrator – who is never named – as well as this reviewer, are all the same age. The place is Key West, one of the three legendary gay vacation meccas of the 1970s and 80s (Fire Island and Provincetown being the other two); and the eponymous pool of the title is in the garden of the most elegant gay bed & breakfast on the island.
Everyone born after 1980 should read this. What seems to be a straightforward, fairly casual murder mystery is in fact a metaphor for a generation.
The narrator has been sent to write a travel article about Key West as a gay destination – even though he is in fact a music critic. He is thirty-five, still young and attractive, and is determined to cheat on his lover (the word we used then), because, he tells us, his relationship has gone stale. Instead, he gets drawn into a murder when he finds a dead body at the bottom of the empty black marble swimming pool.
The reluctant sleuth seems to have it all: a prestigious career, a domestic life, and (never stated, but at the time clearly understood) his health. The fact is, however, he sees himself as something of a loser. What he yearns for is the freedom of his youth, when disco ruled and he was unattached, underemployed, and promiscuous to his heart’s content. He latches onto the murder investigation knowing that it’s giving him the kind of excitement his actual life doesn’t seem to offer.
The pool, you see, is a bleak metaphor for gay life in 1990, when the book was first published: because of the black marble and black tiles, even when it’s full it looks empty. Similarly, the book is populated with characters who lie, both to the narrator and to the people around them. One of those people dies in the pool. On the surface it has a sort of parallel to the cozy Miss Marple mysteries of Agatha Christie, but in that black pool there is a great deal of sadness, deception, and loss.
The writing is not fabulous, and the plot feels pretty makeshift, although Leventhal ties everything up quite neatly (in a messy sort of way) by the end. It does not have the literary quality of Joseph Hansen’s David Brandstetter mysteries, nor does it have the psychological intensity of books like Felice Picano’s 1979 “The Lure.” To be candid, I had trouble warming up to the narrator, possibly because he reminds me of too many men I’ve known. On the other hand, the narrator feels very real – an odd mixture of arrogance and insecurity. The author was himself an editor of several gay magazines, and his writing was part of the burgeoning world of popular gay literature in the 1970s and 80s. Like me, Stan Leventhal lived the life of the 1970s and 80s gay man; unlike me, he didn’t survive it. Maybe what bugs me is that I see in his narrator the very cloud of fear under which we all lived.
At first it felt strange to me that AIDS (and safe sex) is only mentioned in passing, even though by the time this book appeared the plague had devasted the gay community worldwide, and had thus seriously compromised the profitability of the gay consumer market (a fact also mentioned in passing). Then I reminded myself that this was our main survival strategy. We lived our lives, had our fun, hoped for the best. We went to Key West and Provincetown and Fire Island. We went to funerals and memorials and hospitals. It was the life we had, and we made the most of it. Those of us who lived through it look back with a mixture of gratitude and disbelief.
The Black Marble Pool
By Stan Leventhal
ReQueered Tales Edition, 2019, of original 1990 publication
Four stars
For writers my age, this book has special resonance. The time is the end of the 1980s. The author and the narrator – who is never named – as well as this reviewer, are all the same age. The place is Key West, one of the three legendary gay vacation meccas of the 1970s and 80s (Fire Island and Provincetown being the other two); and the eponymous pool of the title is in the garden of the most elegant gay bed & breakfast on the island.
Everyone born after 1980 should read this. What seems to be a straightforward, fairly casual murder mystery is in fact a metaphor for a generation.
The narrator has been sent to write a travel article about Key West as a gay destination – even though he is in fact a music critic. He is thirty-five, still young and attractive, and is determined to cheat on his lover (the word we used then), because, he tells us, his relationship has gone stale. Instead, he gets drawn into a murder when he finds a dead body at the bottom of the empty black marble swimming pool.
The reluctant sleuth seems to have it all: a prestigious career, a domestic life, and (never stated, but at the time clearly understood) his health. The fact is, however, he sees himself as something of a loser. What he yearns for is the freedom of his youth, when disco ruled and he was unattached, underemployed, and promiscuous to his heart’s content. He latches onto the murder investigation knowing that it’s giving him the kind of excitement his actual life doesn’t seem to offer.
The pool, you see, is a bleak metaphor for gay life in 1990, when the book was first published: because of the black marble and black tiles, even when it’s full it looks empty. Similarly, the book is populated with characters who lie, both to the narrator and to the people around them. One of those people dies in the pool. On the surface it has a sort of parallel to the cozy Miss Marple mysteries of Agatha Christie, but in that black pool there is a great deal of sadness, deception, and loss.
The writing is not fabulous, and the plot feels pretty makeshift, although Leventhal ties everything up quite neatly (in a messy sort of way) by the end. It does not have the literary quality of Joseph Hansen’s David Brandstetter mysteries, nor does it have the psychological intensity of books like Felice Picano’s 1979 “The Lure.” To be candid, I had trouble warming up to the narrator, possibly because he reminds me of too many men I’ve known. On the other hand, the narrator feels very real – an odd mixture of arrogance and insecurity. The author was himself an editor of several gay magazines, and his writing was part of the burgeoning world of popular gay literature in the 1970s and 80s. Like me, Stan Leventhal lived the life of the 1970s and 80s gay man; unlike me, he didn’t survive it. Maybe what bugs me is that I see in his narrator the very cloud of fear under which we all lived.
At first it felt strange to me that AIDS (and safe sex) is only mentioned in passing, even though by the time this book appeared the plague had devasted the gay community worldwide, and had thus seriously compromised the profitability of the gay consumer market (a fact also mentioned in passing). Then I reminded myself that this was our main survival strategy. We lived our lives, had our fun, hoped for the best. We went to Key West and Provincetown and Fire Island. We went to funerals and memorials and hospitals. It was the life we had, and we made the most of it. Those of us who lived through it look back with a mixture of gratitude and disbelief.