A Dying Art Form is a murder mystery that takes place in and around the Metropolitan Opera House in 1987. While working on his master’s thesis in psychology at Columbia University, Kevin Whitcomb has resorted to covering his expenses with earnings from the city’s underground economy. Meanwhile, a pandemic is ravaging New York, nonprofit organizations are suffering financial cutbacks, and gay men are dropping like flies after contracting the HIV/AIDS virus. One night, Sergeant Brad Carson is seated in an unmarked police car when he notices a young blond leather boy being chased by a group of teenagers out for a night of fagbashing. 

Opera may be a 400-year-old art form filled with passion, betrayal, music, mayhem, and murder but, while the public revels in its beauty, life backstage is filled with professional rivalries, teeming insecurities, political backstabbing, and lots of make-believe. One night Brad’s sister drags him to a performance at the Metropolitan Opera House where some rich old woman introduces Kevin to Brad as her nephew, Lance. When tragedy strikes, Kevin springs into action as soon as he realizes that, with their roles now reversed, it’s his turn to help his favorite cop. 

A Dying Art Form builds to a climax during a performance of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia. Formatted with plenty of hyperlinks to recordings, live footage, and arcane references, it is a tale told through kinksters, show tunes, a nosy librarian, and friends who must rely on their hidden strengths and perverse intuition to bring a serial killer to justice.

A Dying Art Form is now available on Amazon.com.