The Fisher Boy, by Stephen Anable (Mark Winslow 2)

[Ulysses]

The Fisher Boy (Mark Winslow mystery 2)
By Stephen Anable
Poisoned Pen Press, 2008
Five stars

I’m reading these in the wrong order, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I missed these books the first time out—because they appeared before I got my Kindle and became a voracious reader. I am so glad I found them.

Stephen Anable is an elegant writer. The setting and mood are closely observed, but Anable’s word choices go beyond the call of duty, taking his prose to a level above most good writers. It is a bonus for a mystery that is already chilling, eerie, and filled with interesting, puzzling, infuriating characters.

The last time I visited Provincetown, Massachusetts, was at forty-one, with my longterm partner (now husband) in tow, along with our two adopted children. We somehow thought we could capture the charm and romance of our first visit to P’town, for my 21st birthday. Well, no. I mean we had two toddlers. What was I thinking? I point this out because Stephen Anable creates a very different, darker vision of Provincetown, set in exactly the moment when I last was there, in the late 1990s.

In this mystery, Mark Winslow is pushing thirty, and still at loose ends. Given what we learn about him in the course of the story, it’s no surprise. Having abandoned advertising for acting, Mark and his little troupe of improv artists are trying to break into the summer scene in Provincetown. His friend Roberto Schreiber (a Cuban Jew by birth) is on the verge of becoming more than a friend, as he and Mark hobnob with the A-gays of P’Town, trying to get some stage time to build their reputation.

The core mystery revolves around the grisly murder of one of Mark’s social connections; a classmate from a recently-defunct New England prep school they attended in the mid-1980s. This murder, oddly enough, is just one of a series of increasingly creepy events that seem to overtake the normally genial summer resort for what was not-quite-yet called the LGBTQ community. The atmosphere of the entire book is infused with the heat and drought that have parched Cape Cod, and images of blazing sun and hot, humid nights add to the claustrophobic, paranoid atmosphere.

This is one of those books that I don’t want to describe any further, for fear of spoiling any of the shudder-inducing surprises that keep the reader on the edge of his seat till the very end. A smart reader will be able to tease out foreshadowing carefully planted by the author, but Mark Winslow himself, wrought up with various anxieties related to his life, career, and family, is often frustratingly clueless. It’s an interesting, feeling to be one step ahead of your protagonist, and Anable uses this to ratchet up the tension as the plot unspools. Mark is smart but feckless; compassionate but self-absorbed. We like him, and fear for him.

I’m going to keep digging for more of these Mark Winslow books.