Mark Richard Zubro

This is an article that appeared in the Sunday editions of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Author brings gay detectives back for overseas caper

July 16, 2006

BY Avis Weathersbee

Holmes and Watson; Nero and Archie; Poirot and
Hastings ... Speculation regarding the nature of the
relationships between the above-mentioned detectives
may provide for endless dinner party musings, but
local author Mark Richard Zubro leaves no doubt when
it comes to the protagonists in his own mystery
series.

His creations Tom Mason and Scott Carpenter are
partners both in crime and in life, and with their
11th adventure, Everyone's Dead But Us, the guys find
everything but their relationship tested.

When Tom, a teacher, and Scott, a pro athlete, leave
Chicago behind for the solitude of a pricey holiday on
an island in the Aegean, they don't exactly get what
they bargained for. Not by a long shot. After
discovering a murdered man in their suite of rooms,
they find their troubles increasing exponentially as
the killings continue and a catastrophic storm severs
all links to the world beyond. The book then sets our
heroes on a frantic exercise to unmask the villainous
culprit.

Clearly Zubro relishes following in the tradition of
the countless pop-culture vehicles -- from "Remington
Steele" to "Murder She Wrote" -- that followed in the
tradition of Ten Little Indians (a k a And Then There
Were None).

"It's very Agatha Christie-ish, of course," says
Zubro, who lives in southwest suburban Mokena. "Tom
gave Scott -- as a wedding present when they got
married in Here Comes the Corpse -- a yearly visit to
this fabulous resort. I thought, 'Oh, I can set a
mystery there. I can make it an island. It could be
stormy.' Different authors have [employed this device]
-- Carolyn Hart did a hurricane in her Henrie O. books
-- so it has a rich history behind it."

Zubro, who retired from teaching last month, has been
at the mystery game for nearly two decades, completing
his first Tom and Scott novel in 1987. But, untrue to
the stories often told by writers in this genre, he
didn't suffer rejection upon rejection. "I did my
research and found that Michael Denneny at St.
Martin's Press was publishing other books with gay
detectives, so I sent it directly to him. The story is
almost embarrassing ... that's the first place I sent
it to, and they picked up my book. I was very, very
lucky.

"I still don't have an agent and didn't back then," he
adds. "All the years Denneny was publishing at St.
Martin's, he took two books in 17 years that came over
the transom like that. I was very lucky."

But even with 11 books in this series and another
eight featuring his Chicago police detective Paul
Turner, Zubro can't quite lay claim to the lifestyle
of the idle rich who jet off to the type of island
paradise that is the vacation spot in Everyone's Dead
But Us.

Alas, he says he depended on Internet research and the
New York Times travel section when delineating the
kinds of amenities that "made this a rich person's
resort as opposed to not." (For his part, the author
jokes that his travels usually result in stays at
Super 8 motels).

That research served him well in establishing the
novel's mise en scene. The resort he constructs offers
its guests extravagant villas and abundant staff to
attend to their every demand. It also has a historic
castle as its centerpiece, which is described as
housing a treasure of collectible gay literature, art
and artifacts.

And the former teachers' union president's tenure as
an English instructor in the Summit Hills school
district makes for a sure hand when crafting crisp,
fluid prose:

"I'd never seen a storm coming at night across the sea
so we stopped and watched. It was beautiful, half the
sky boiling with darkness, half still lit by the full
moon and the mantle of stars. Out beyond the harbor
breakwater, the sea foamed and frothed."

Of course such moments of repose don't last for long
as Tom and Scott are propelled headlong onto a
collision course with the killer. Despite the tense
situation they face, the couple's solid personal
relationship never falters.

"I knew when I started the books they were going to be
a happy couple," says Zubro, who is gay. "There were
just so few [in pop culture] and frankly there still
are."

Showing a healthy sense of humor, though, the author
admits that in the first couple of books before he
struck a more realistic balance "they were so much in
love that it was just a bit much."

With equal humor he also acknowledges there may just
be a recurring theme in his work when it comes to who
falls on the wrong side of the chalk outline.

"I usually start [the writing process] with who's dead
-- the body. And in a number of books you'll discover
that homophobic people turn out to be the victims," he
says, laughing.

Retirement means that Zubro will be able to spend more
time developing projects, including the political
thriller he's collaborating on with fellow area
mystery writers Jeanne Dams and Barbara D'Amato. He
also plans on heading to the West Coast at year's end
for a seminar on how to translate books to the screen.


And while he says the "likelihood of selling my stuff
[to Hollywood] is small," in this post-"Brokeback
Mountain" era, maybe not...


Avis Weathersbee is a Sun-Times deputy features
editor.

EVERYONE'S DEAD BUT US

A TOM & SCOTT MYSTERY

BY MARK RICHARD ZUBRO

St. Martin's Minotaur, 288 pages, $24.95