Enter to win Shade
Enter to win Shade by H. N. Hirsch. To enter the contest, fill out the form below between Friday, May 26, and Friday, June 16.
A Bob and Marcus Mystery Series
Blend atmospheric academic politics at Harvard University with a murder that rocks a New England community, and explores the gay lifestyle operating beneath its veneer of conservatism, for a sense of the different approach that Shade cultivates. [This is] a murder mystery that features an unlikely investigator: Assistant Professor Marcus George, a young, gay faculty member who becomes involved in investigating the murder of one of his former students, the son of a wealthy family.
H.N. Hirsch's ability to capture the mercurial mystery in a way that will grab the attention of mystery and general-interest audiences alike is evident from the opening lines of the story: "At first he did not think it would be anything, just a quick meal with a former student. He didn't know a young life was about to end, or that his own life was, in a way, just beginning." The issues introduced by lifestyle and culture..., from relationships between disparate age groups to the culture of an Ivy League college community in New England, ... add more depth to the story than the usual whodunit, delving into matters of social and political conflict as well as crime and discovery. Hirsch is particularly adept at ... capturing the atmosphere of a changing world in which the AIDS epidemic is ravaging the gay community.
Describing Shade as a "murder mystery" alone does it an injustice. [It is] highly recommended not just for mystery readers, but for those interested in the culture and special social, political, and psychological challenges of members of the gay community in 1980s New England.
----D. Donovan, Donovan's Bookshelf, Midwest Book Review
In H. N. Hirsch's Shade, Marcus George, a junior faculty member at Harvard who is gay and in almost every way an outsider, gets drawn into solving the murder of one of his advisees, the son-gay, brilliant, and gorgeous-of an old, elite Massachusetts family. This is a mystery that goes beyond who-done-it to capture the tense, competitive world of academic politics and that vividly puts on the page the Ivy League and "Miller's Cove," a coastal town in Maine. The plot thickens and thickens again, and in the process, Marcus falls into a tender and heartwarming love affair. This novel is beautifully realized, a gripping read from beginning to end.
-Priscilla Long, author, Fire and Stone: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Shade is a dilly of a mystery! Set in mid-1980s ivory-tower academia, a gay, untenured Harvard professor discovers that "publish or perish" can lead to dark places when he is asked to help find the murderer of a gifted former student. Author H. N. Hirsch brilliantly captures the milieux of Boston and the very rich, the dog-eat-dog world of faculty hierarchy, and gay life at the beginning of AIDS' deadly march.
Like Jimmy Stewart in many of his films, Marcus is an everyman thrust into unexpected and dangerous places, and he must set things right-often at his own peril. This journey is enriched when he meets Bob, who becomes his "Dr. Watson" and romantic partner. The two doggedly pursue what seems to be a dead-end case, and then ... well, the dénouement is part of the fun of, a congenial fillip for those who enjoy mysteries.
-C. Robert Jones, author, I Like It Here; The Mystery at Claggett Cover (the Lanky Tales series); Acting Onstage: 55 Practical Tips for Success
A modern murder mystery. Assistant Professor Marcus George, a young, gay Harvard faculty member striving to find his footing in the Ivy League, is drawn into investigating the murder of one of his former students, the son of an elite Massachusetts family. Centered on the tense, competitive world of academic politics, the narrative vividly captures the publish-or-perish standards of academia, the strictures of life in exclusive enclaves in Boston and Kennebunkport, and the gay subculture along the New England coast. As he investigates the murder, Marcus stumbles across academic and financial corruption that could ruin several lives -- even as he falls into a tender and heartwarming love affair that will change his own. Hirsch's first novel is a beautifully realized, gripping tale in the classic style of the murder mystery genre.
H.N. Hirsch is a political scientist by training, an acclaimed college teacher, and a lifelong reader and writer.
H. N. Hirsch is a writer and political scientist who has taught at Harvard, UC-San Diego, Macalester College, and Oberlin, where he served as Dean of the Faculty and is now the Erwin N. Griswold Professor of Politics Emeritus. He is the author of The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter "brilliant" according to the New York Times), A Theory of Liberty, the memoir Office Hours, and numerous articles, as well as the edited volume, The Future of Gay Rights in America. Fault Line is his second novel featuring amateur detectives Bob and Marcus, who were introduced in Shade in 2022. A third volume, Rain, will appear in 2024.
H.N. Hirsch grew up in Chicago and graduated with highest honors from the University of Michigan in 1974. He received a PhD in politics from Princeton in 1978 and then was appointed an assistant professor at Harvard, where he published his first book, The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter, which the New York Times called "brilliant" and which received widespread critical attention. In 1986 he moved to a tenured appointment at the University of California at San Diego, where he served a board member of the ACLU and a board member and president of Diversionary Theatre, one of the oldest and most highly acclaimed LGBT theaters in the country.
In 2000, he moved to an endowed chair at Macalester College in Minnesota, and in 2005 was appointed Dean of the Faculty at Oberlin College in Ohio, where he continued to teach until his retirement in 2021. In 2016, he published a memoir about his academic life and his life as a gay men, Office Hours, which one critic called "wistful and well crafted."
A varacious reader of fiction, he realized a life-long ambition to publish his own mystery novel, Shade, in 2022, and then his current work, Fault Line, both featuring a gay couple as the main characters. Shade earned accolades from dozens of readers on Amazon.
