THE P'TOWN MURDERS
Haworth Press, Southern Tier Editions
Publication date August 2007

Read an excerpt...

In a place that’s ‘to die for’, no one expects to die for real!

When circuit party boy Ross Pretty succumbs of an overdose of Ecstasy in ‘the gayest place on earth’, his death is ruled accidental. That is, until his former lover Bradford Fairfax discovers Provincetown’s most insidious secret.

Bradford thinks he’s pretty well pinned Ross’s murder on Hayden Rosengarten, a wealthy, evil-minded entrepreneur, but then Hayden inconveniently turns up dead. And he won’t be the last to die.

While investigating P’Town’s darker side, Bradford meets up with a figure from his past, the strangely talented, blue-haired Zachary Tyler. Is Zach all that he claims?

And what of Big Ruby, Bradford’s diminutive lesbian rescuer and owner of Coffee Joe’s, who keeps one eye on her regulars and the other on her gun? And then there’s Cinder Lindquist, the flirtatious female impersonator with a thousand faces. But which one is real? And why is every second person Bradford meets a dyed-in-the-wool Buddhist?

Ultimately, Bradford’s investigation of a chain of murders in the gay Shangri-La leads all the way to a conspiracy to assassinate the Dalai Lama.

Agatha Christie meets Oscar Wilde with a dash of Mae West in this high-camp, madcap, She-Done-Him-Wrong murder mystery with a pair of unforgettable gay heroes at its core.

Here's what the world is saying about The P'Town Murders

Amos Lassen for Literary Pride, Little Rock, July 2007
Bradford Fairfax is a hunk. He is also a secret agent who is partly James Bond, partly Sherlock Holmes and partly Quincy. More than all, however, is that he is a man who must be dealt with.

Provincetown has long been a gay resort but the P'Town that we get here is one full of greed, murderous jealousies and disappointments. It is also a great setting for a new mystery novel by Jeffrey Round, 'The P'Town Murders'. When a circuit party boy named Ross Petty dies because of an ecstasy overdose, his death is ruled an accident but along comes Bradford Fairfax, a complicated, human, sensitive and very seductive secret agent who decides that Ross was murdered and feels that the crime was committed by Hayden Rosengarten. Rosengarten is wealthy and has an evil mind but he also suddenly is found dead. This is just the beginning of a string of deaths and Brad must solve the series of puzzling murders. At the same time he learns of a plot to murder the Dalai Lama.

Brad begins to wonder if the murderer is someone he knows and almost loses his own life trying to solve the case. His boss, Grace, who has given him leave to go to P'Town informs him of the plot of the Dali Lama and is concerned that the two cases may be connected. Brad's next assignment is to guard the visiting religious leader on his visit to America. As his list of suspects grows, the book gets wilder and wilder.

The characters in the book are wild and original and the story is true escapism. It is a great summer read and if you like mysteries, this one is great fun. I loved the flamboyant list of murder suspects and I fell in love with Brad Fairfax. He solves the murder, of course, and falls in love and saves the Dalai Lama. (I hope I did not spoil it for you).

The author has created a wonderful gay detective. He fits no stereotype; he is charming, handsome, human and complicated and a real man. He leads a glamorous life and he is just like any one of us.

There is great humor in the book and it is touching as well. Provincetown comes across as a gay Disneyland and does not come across as it usually does. The list of suspects for the murder a real treat and just great fun. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

RM Vaughan, Author of the novels A Quilted Heart and Spells
“SPARKLING, FUNNY, AND ODDLY TOUCHING, The P'town Murders pulls back the sequined curtain to reveal a Provincetown fuelled by greed, disappointment, and murderous desires. If you thought Provincetown was all tea dances, crushed ice cocktails and show tunes, you're in for a shock. Imagine a gay Disneyland run by the queer equivalent of Dick Tracey's Rogues Gallery, and you're halfway home. With Bradford Fairfax, Jeffrey Round has created a gay detective who defies all the stereotypes of the gay detective: charming yet insecure, handsome yet fretful, Fairfax is not a perfectly sculpted, party boy gay superhero, he's human, complicated, and subsequently very seductive. The gay murder mystery genre doesn't need another mannequin, it needs a real man. We root for Fairfax not because we envy him his glamorous life, but because he is one of us.”