The Hangdog Hustle

Elizabeth. Pincus

In her third case following The Two-Bit Tango, lesbian San Francisco PI Nell Fury is hired to look into the last days of stabbing victim Kent Kishida. She first suspects he was killed because he was a gay man working at the Presidio, army land on the city's northern edge. His death occurred a few days before the fatal beating of a gay sailor at a Japanese naval base, but differences between the cases bother Nell: Kent was of Japanese ancestry, and he was a civilian employee of the Army, not Navy. As she begins to poke around the Presidio, which is on the verge of being transformed from a military base into a federal park, she discovers Kent's participation in a neighborhood coalition concerned with toxic waste cleanup at the base. Although the police, having all but dropped the case, think his part in the activist group has no bearing on his murder, Nell refuses to discount it as a lead. With dogged determination, she pursues the truth more dispassionately than either the police or gay friends, who are both more than willing to jump to conclusions. Pincus's Nell makes a fine complicated figure: not only does she manage to balance her emotion and her reason here, but she continues to juggle job, love life and responsibilities as absentee mother.