Title: Gossip Author: Christopher Bram Published by: Dutton, 1997 ISBN: 0-525-93914-8 [hardcover , 337 pages]
Ralph Eckhart meets "Thersites" on the Internet. The manager of a Greenwich village bookstore and politically to the left, Ralph agrees to an F2F (face-to-face) meeting with Thersites in Washington, D.C., where his friend Nancy writes speeches for a popular woman senator. With his penchant for Shakespearean drama, Ralph should have seen the elements gathering for tragedy . . . or farce.Thersites proves to be a young, attractive, and enthusiastic lover. He is also Republican, in the closet, right-wing, and the author of a tell-all book that spreads gossip about several Washington women, including a footnote about a lesbian affair between a speechwriter and a "happily married" senator. In a town where rumors can kill a career, such words may be fatal. And despite his passion, Ralph is disturbed by his new lover's politics . . . and then stunned at being charged with his murder.
Now, in an edgy, seductive, and totally convincing story, Christopher Bram joins dark satire with chilling suspense as Ralph is arrested for first-degree homicide and becomes a "cause" in the gay community. Here Bram's dead-on depiction of gay and straight politics, FBI conspiracies, and sex inside the Beltway taps into our national paranoia and delivers a knock-out punch of truth. Gossip is Bram's own "tell-all" book, showing how power corrupts both left and right, and how homophbia still hurts.
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