"Cold Serial Murder"--Tim Snow returns

[AmosL]

Abramson, Mark. “Cold Serial Murder: Book 2 in the Beach Reading Series”, Lethe Press, 2009.

Tim Snow Returns

Amos Lassen

I promised to let you know when there would be another book in the “Beach Reading” series and I am glad to tell you that I just received the uncorrected galleys of “Cold Serial Murder”, the second book in Mark Abramson’s series on gay life. I could not wait to get started reading it so I took yesterday afternoon off, turned off the phone and sat down in my favorite chair to lose myself in it. From the get go let me say that it is not only as good as “Beach Reading”, it is even better. Mark Abramson knows how to tell a story and he does so with a lot of references to gay life today. Abramson is the kind of guy I could fall in love with if his writing is anything like him. He creates real characters—we all know someone like the guys in the book and we get the sense that we are not just reading a book but that we are participating in the experience that we read about.
Like “Beach Reading”, “Cold Serial Murder” is a love song to San Francisco. Our hero, Tim Snow, takes his visiting aunt on a tour of the city and while they are visiting the sights of one of the gayest cities in the world, Tim gets a real surprise. He comes across the dead body of his ex-lover. He and his aunt come to the conclusion that there is a killer roaming the Castro and they decide to find out who it is. To say anymore about the plot would ruin your fun of reading the book so I won’t. But I will say that the book is a guide to gay San Francisco and for those of you have visited there, you will probably feel a bit homesick. For those of you who have been to San Francisco, you may find yourselves making plans for a trip. Abramson gives us a vivid description of the town and his ability to give detail is amazing. This is a great read and the only problem I have is waiting for the sequel—in fact, there are going to be several sequels as I learned from the last page of the book, If you are like me you do not want to get behind. It is always nice to know that there is a book to be waited for and it is that much nicer when the book is by Mark Abramson.