THE DISASTER GAY DETECTIVE AGENCY

Four queer New Yorkers try to solve a crime while sorting out something equally vexing: their romantic lives.

Brandon, the 20-something night-shift concierge at a lower Manhattan boutique hotel, has a history of making poor choices when it comes to men, so naturally he violates the hotel’s no-sex-with-guests rule and sleeps with one. At work the following night, he learns that the man checked out early and left a bag containing a phone in his hotel room. Brandon is suspicious: “You definitely don’t leave a phone behind,” he thinks. “No matter how bad the sex was.” When an imposter comes to the hotel to claim the bag, Brandon secretly holds on to the phone. After he recaps everything that happened for his three best friends, Ollie, Nicole, and Ian—who are a social conservative’s nightmare of gender nonconformity—Ollie does some spying with Brandon and witnesses a guy getting his brains blown out during a conversation with Brandon’s hotel paramour. All four friends, who take turns with the novel’s point of view (resulting, unhelpfully, in some repeated exchanges), join forces to investigate the goings-on. It may not sound like it from that synopsis, but the book’s strength lies in its humor. Rosen, who’s behind the Evander Mills detective series and is apparently launching a new one with this offering, makes good use of group chats to refine amusing aspects of each friend’s personality. The book is on less firm footing in terms of plot: This is the sort of mystery in which the reader knows more than the characters about both the investigation and their personal lives. Still, the whole thing hurtles divertingly toward a critical scene at a game night in Brooklyn that’s a screwball-comedy set piece—until things turn ugly.

Come for the comedy if not for the mystery.