Win Katie Gilmartin's Blackmail, My Love: A Murder Mystery

Blackmail, My Love: A Murder Mystery by Katie Gilmartin

Win a copy of Katie Gilmartin's brand new book, Blackmail, My Love: A Murder Mystery. To enter the contest, fill out the form below between December 5 and December 26.

Neo-Noir Thriller Revels in San Francisco's Underground History

First-time novelist Katie Gilmartin breaks into noir fiction with her brilliantly conceived, illustrated thriller, Blackmail, My Love: A Murder Mystery. With a doctoral background in Queer Studies, Gilmartin reveals secret histories of San Francisco's mid-century queer underground as we follow her into a world of corruption, coercion, murder, and mystery. Josie O'Conner travels to San Francisco in 1951 to locate her gay brother, a private dick investigating a blackmail ring targeting lesbians and gay men. Jimmy's friends claim that just before he disappeared he became a rat, informing the cops on the bar community's nascent resistance to raids, graft, and brutality. Josie adopts Jimmy's trousers and wingtips as well as his investigation, battling to clear his name, halt the blackmailers, and exact justice for the mounting number of Queer corpses.

Set in such legendary locations as the Black Cat Cafe, the Fillmore, the Beat movement's North Beach, and the sexually complex Tenderloin,the novel's action is fueled by a 1951 California Supreme Court ruling that homosexuals have a right to congregate: the decision incited tavern owner resistance to customary payoffs in exchange for police protection, but provoked new tactics to justify raids and extortion. Blackmail, My Love distills fiction and queer history into a singular, visually stunning experience.

Also available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

"Blackmail, My Love will entertain fans of the noir genre, but its social themes and messages about love and redemption will also appeal to a wider audience."
—ForeWord Reviews

Katie Gilmartin received a Ph.D. in cultural studies from Yale, with an emphasis in queer history. After teaching the history of sexuality and queer studies for a decade at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of California, Berkeley, and The New College, she became a printmaker. Her prior publications are academic essays based on interviews she conducted with lesbians about their lives in the 1940s and 1950s. This is her first work of fiction. Gilmartin lives in San Francisco.