False Confessions: A Doug Orlando Mystery (Onyx) [Paperback]

Steve Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Onyx | Publication Date: August 1, 1993

Out of the closet gay New York cop Doug Orlando searches for a serial killer who leaves his victims--most recently, a priest--naked except for dozens of long needles stuck in their bodies.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Steve Neil Johnson is a novelist and screenwriter who has written 25 scripts for television and is the author of the Doug Orlando mysteries, FINAL ATONEMENT (Lambda Literary Award nominee) and FALSE CONFESSIONS. His other books include the thriller THIS ENDLESS NIGHT, the young adult novel RAISING KANE and the middle-grade book EVERYBODY HATES EDGAR ALLAN POE! He was honored by The ONE Institute/The International Gay and Lesbian Archives for his contributions to gay literature. He is currently working on a four-part crime saga, The L.A. AFTER MIDNIGHT Quartet. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Signet (August 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451403835
• ISBN-13: 978-0451403834
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,486,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite mystery, September 19, 2011

By 

J. Rosen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: False Confessions: A Doug Orlando Mystery (Paperback)

The Doug Orlando Mysteries are the best books I've ever read describing the treacherous political landscape in New York City and the troubled relationships between the very different groups who reside there. If you've ever lived in New York, you'll know how honest and incisive these novels are. FALSE CONFESSIONS is my favorite mystery novel: compelling, politically astute, with characters so sharply described you feel like you've known them all your life, and a climax so suspenseful I just couldn't put it down. I especially love the relationship between Brooklyn Homicide detective Doug Orlando and his partner, English professor Stewart, which is so real and sexy and yet quite humorous, too. The supporting characters--particularly caustic gossip columnist and political writer Herb Chiligny, and diesel-dyke medical examiner turned lipstick lesbian Ronnie Bell--originally introduced in the first book in the series, FINAL ATONEMENT, really hit their stride in this book. The scenes with Ronnie are especially hilarious and on-target--yet full of compassion--in skewering the cultural rift between older and younger lesbians.

But at the core of this novel is the dead-serious subject of how people exploit religion to deny others their civil rights, and the devastating impact that oppression has on people's lives. When a serial killer targets gay men involved in underground piercing and tattooing culture, and rumors spread that the killer has confessed to a troubled priest who refuses to reveal the killer's identity, all hell breaks out between the gay community and the notoriously homophobic New York Catholic Church. Orlando's search for the killer brings him into contact with a wide variety of New Yorkers--with often bitterly different views on morality--but it's the haunting stories of the people Orlando encounters and what we learn about the human condition that makes this book so moving and compelling. The heart-stopping climax of the book has the best choreographed chase scene I've ever read. FALSE CONFESSIONS is a gripping page-turner and an absorbing must-read.

5.0 out of 5 stars Strikingly original, September 2, 2011

By 

Reviewer - See all my reviews

This review is from: False Confessions: A Doug Orlando Mystery (Paperback)

Review by Randy Turoff, San Francisco Bay Times

On the heels of his successful debut novel, Final Atonement, Steve Neil Johnson has come up with another strikingly original novel in the Doug Orlando series. False Confessions is the best casual reading I've come across yet. Johnson's style is perfectly cinematic, perfectly nourish, but also full of compassion, insight and complexity that never fails to cut directly to the bone. The author, like his gay cop protagonist, overlooks nothing in his quest for precision, truth and the meaning and intentions behind the actions of the characters in his book.

Motivations are uncovered as the plot opens into a multiplicity of details which ring absolutely true. The plot twists are clever and clean, never contrived, and Johnson makes it all easy to follow and pleasurable to keep pace with. Best of all, the book is loaded with gay and lesbian characters. It examines gay politics, relationships, issues and community values. Steve Neil Johnson may very well turn out to be our queer Raymond Chandler.

False Confessions pits Detective Orlando of Brooklyn Homicide against a serial killer who has a murderous rage against certain types of gay men. Until the very end, the killer's identity is up for grabs; a number of suspects, frame-ups, and conspirators are in the wings. Detective Orlando is not actually assigned to the serial killer case, but he takes it upon himself to snare the psycho because "gay victims, especially underground culture gays, won little sympathy from the police department...and lack of compassion for the victim sent cases on the fast track to the graveyard file...Orlando vowed this case wasn't going that route, not as long as he was on the force."

While investigating the murder of a Catholic priest, Orlando begins his parallel investigation of the needle torturer stalking the city. Through an informant, Orlando learns that the now-deceased Father Morant was privy to the murder's confession. On top of that, it is the priest's attitude toward homosexuality that serves as the unusual linchpin around which the mystery revolves. All the clues, characters, political intrigues and intergroup dynamics ricochet off the corpse of the priest, which Orlando is examining on the first page of the novel even before the unit photographer or the forensics team arrives.

Orlando is a great detective. He literally sniffs out the clues and his uncanny ability to identify with other people, both dead and alive, by entering into their physical and mental spaces with complete empathy. When it comes to searching for the monster behind the serial killings, Orlando goes beyond the clues and modus operandi and moves toward finding out the "why" of the rampage. We see the psychopathic mind acting upon its own grotesque logic. We understand how things can happen in this world of Doug Orlando where revenge is a daily operant and where pleasure can blur into pain as easily as love can slip into hatred.

Orlando's search takes him to places like No Exit, a punk S/M club by the Hudson, and Red Demon, a notorious tattoo and piercing parlor. Throughout the book, he comes into contact with Catholic clergy and ex-clergy who are conservative, homophobic, sexually twisted and alcoholic, as well as some who are closeted but actively gay, liberationist and pro-abortion. He comes to grips with members of Queer Nation, Dignity and the Aryan Brotherhood.

All the while, Orlando is involved in a domestic relationship with his long-term lover Stewart, who was introduced beautifully in the last book, and expanded upon as a character in this one. Other characters reappear, like Ronnie, the dyke medical examiner who has turned into a modified lipstick lesbian going through a mid-life crisis, as is Orlando, who sees ghosts of dead friends who used to frequent the now defunct Ramrod in the good `ole leather days before the holocaust. Also making a comeback is Orlando's cruel arch-rival, Briggs, who shot a Black youth in the back, claimed self-defense, and returned to the police force after a mere six-month suspension, which he got not for killing the kid, but for falsifying a police report. Herb Chiligny, queeny activist and columnist for the Village World, known for his exposes of police corruption, comes into False Confessions as a man accused of murder.

As other characters come back, new ones are introduced, including Chiligny's ex-lover, Anthony, a member of Queer Nation. There's also Rick Dunham, a pivotal Wall Street character who came out of the closet to employ gay juvies in his freelance office. Propelling the book are the young gay street hustlers, tattoo artists, bar patrons, little old Italian widows and police wives. Characters speak to each other in ways that are incisive, profound and natural at the same time.

As we approach the heart-pounding climax of the novel, Steve Neil Johnson leaves us with a few dangling questions about a police brotherhood of racism, and about Ronnie's secret unfulfilled fantasy involving her extended gay family. I'm sure we'll hear more about this in the next installment of the Doug Orlando Mystery series.