BY KEITH GAREBIAN -- STAGE AND PAGE

To affirm that Lambda-Award winner Jeffrey Round writes quick-paced gay pulp fiction is not to denigrate either the genre or this talented writer. It is merely to recognize the character of his writing in which the central figures are gay detectives or private investigators, where some of the other fictional characters are also gay, and where some of the themes advanced by the fiction pertain to gay issues. However, it is necessary to point out that the gay quotient, while a central component, is not necessarily the driving force. In the Bradford Fairfax novels (such as The P-Town Murders, Death in Key West, or Vanished in Vallarta), the fact that Fairfax is a handsome gay secret agent, upholder of justice, and sexy hunk is crucial to some of the dramatic and satiric allure of the tales—as are the gay ambience of Provincetown (Massachusetts), Key West, or Puerto Vallarta, for instance, where the reader is apt to meet such camp characters as a transvestite ghost; fluttery, a flamboyant female-impersonator named Cinder Lindquist; lesbian café owner Big Ruby; cosmetically and surgically enhanced Jarod Scythes; half-blood Cherokee Little Wing; blue-haired “twink” Zach; the exotic Aztec Drag Queen Esmeralda; and various raunchy, romping characters in gay resorts where pheromones permeate the settings and where sex can be a thing of great acrobatic agility and virtuosity. Camp wit is writ large in these tales, and though the permutations of plot can sometimes seem inordinately high, the exaggerations can be put aside because of the compelling ambience and dialogue. Moreover, the principal themes are always connected to contemporary reality:  sexual identity, drug use, desire, relationships, love, generation gaps, political chicanery, and existential authenticity.

            The Dan Sharp mysteries are less flamboyant and less camp in characterization, though the sense of place and wit as large as ever. In The Jade Butterfly, that begins with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest and massacre and moves swiftly to Toronto and more briefly to Hamilton, Round creates a firm sense of place with his quick evocation of the Forbidden City and the Square, Toronto’s gay district, Leslieville, and the Bridle Path, and Hamilton (with its “smoke-belching chimneys and flame-throwing up-thrust”). But what’s a setting without a plot and interesting characters? In what is his third Dan Sharp mystery (following Lake on the Mountain and Pumpkin Eater), the gay private investigator (father of a teenage son out of a one-night stand) finds himself hired by a mysterious but strikingly handsome young Chinese man named Ren (who represents himself as a cultural ambassador for trade and tourism) to find his long-lost sister, Ling, whom he believes survived the Tiananmen massacre and is somewhere in Canada. Ren and Dan are sexually attracted to each other, and this is where the personal and the political, the sexual and the criminal get entangled. If Ling is alive, Ren would like her to return the jade butterfly, a family heirloom. But before you can remember the plot of The Maltese Falcon, Round raises the ante, showing how Dan’s certitude of certain things gets shaken to the core. The closer Dan gets to finding Ling, the more confused he becomes about the brother, sister, politics, and his own self. Warned by his friend Donny that relationships can be dangerous, Dan is forced to agree by a concatenation of intense plot complications.

            The way Round evokes Dan Sharp in this page-turner is admirable in its psychological tremors, representing the man’s self-doubt about his ability to be an effective parent to a son going through his own issues of adolescence, as well as the man’s painful acknowledgement that he may not know how to love another man. Blending the private man with the single gay dad reality, the strong detective with the emotionally vulnerable sufferer of chronic PTSD, Round creates a very credible character, who is not simply a puppet on a writer’s strings. Dan is, of course, is a sober character who is only occasionally reckless; flamboyant ambiguity enters through Ren and Ling. And mystery suspense builds and holds till the inevitable denouement where the reader discovers how Dan has been unwittingly exploited by CSIS, the real relationship between Ren and Ling, and the real significance of the jade butterfly.

HAPPY NEW YOU!

Here's looking forward to another great year!

My 2012 was rounded out by two trips to Havana, the first in January and then again this December. Both trips spawned book ideas, as well as articles on the lamentable state of LGBT rights in Cuba and on the country's outstanding success with its literacy drive. Fans of Bradford Fairfax will be pleased to know there is a series prequel in the works that has the intrepid Brad traveling to Havana. I've also been working on a literary novel that takes place during the Cuban revolution. Last month I visited several historic sites that feature large in both books, including the stunning Hotel Nacional de Cuba, now a World Heritage site, set on Taganana Hill overlooking the Malecon.

In November, I was in Palm Springs following a fun- and adventure-filled drive down the coast from San Francisco (yes, I was there the night the Giants won the World Series, in case you're a fan), where I was a featured writer at the Authors' Village during PS Pride. A great event!

Earlier in the fall, I learned from my new publisher that my first Dan Sharp mystery, Lake On The Mountain, was consistently one of Dundurn's top-selling ebooks. Thanks to those of you who made that happen! And just a reminder that Dan Sharp will return in Pumpkin Eater in spring 2014.

Last year I also had the pleasure of being a featured blogger on Unvailed.com, a site dedicated to the pursuit of ideas and the unfettered imagination. I hope to continue contributing to the site in future.

And finally, I just heard that a poem I wrote about the James Dean film Rebel Without A Cause has been selected for an upcoming collection entitled I Found It At The Movies, to be edited by Ruth Roach Pierson and published by Guernica Editions.

Sherlock vs. Downton Abbey

While everyone else has been engrossed in Downton Abbey, a new version of Upstairs, Downstairs, I've been absorbed with the 21^st century reinvention of Sherlock Holmes as Sherlock, easily one of the most fun, well-written series in a decade.

I watched season one of Downton Abbey because of Maggie Smith, always a joy, and cast here as the formidable Dowager Countess trying to ensure that her granddaughter marry a "suitable" husband. I loved Smith and enjoyed the series, but not enough to return.

My reluctance comes from a suspicion of soap operas, that strange hybrid that is neither drama nor opera. I want things to build, explode and resolve in one episode, rather than have to return week after week to discover what Annie, Fanny and Manny were up to since I last saw them. If I want long, drawn-out sagas, I simply ask my friends what's been going on in their love lives and drink tea while pretending to listen.

Sherlock was created by writer/producer Steven Moffat, and writer/actor Mark Gatiss, who plays Sherlock's troublesome brother, Mycroft. The pair worked together on the revised Doctor Who series. (Nothing like the old one. If you haven't seen the recent version with Matt Smith--a comic genius--don’t write it off.)

The BBC has long been known for pairing actors, especially in comedic roles. Think ofJennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous, Aidan Gillen and Craig Kelly in Queer As Folk (before it got turned into a soap opera-with-an-agenda in the US version), David Walliams and Matt Lucas in Little Britain. And now here are Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Sherlock and his sidekick John Watson. The pairing doesn't get much better, either as actors or characters.

While reinventing nearly everything wholesale, it's to the producers' credit that they've remained charmingly true to Conan Doyle's books, beginning with A Study In Pink, a sly retelling of Holmes's first case, A Study In Scarlet. The result is a delirious rewriting of the original stories, as when The Hound of the Baskervilles comes back as The Hounds of Baskerville, an experiment in genetic modification and then some.

For serious fun, this is as good as it gets. Here is Holmes in A Scandal in Belgravia, going off to Buckingham Palace draped in a bed sheet, as angry and imperious as a queen at being forced to do something he doesn't want to do. Elsewhere, he informs two young girls asking him to investigate their grandfather's disappearance that, contrary to what their parents may have said, "People don’t go to Heaven; they’re put in a special box and burned," while John Watson looks on, appalled by his friend's social ineptness.

Of course, it's the twenty-first century, so no one believes two men living together are not gay. And who is to say they’re not? The oddball pairing of Holmes with Watson in the 19^th century may simply have been a case of arrested sexual development. Here, the gay subtext, which is more often ubertext, gets some of the best play in the series, as the two are constantly mistaken for a couple. In fact they are a couple, whatever may or may not go on after the lights go out. In any case, the love between the two men is palpable, if unspoken, from show one.

(Initially, A Study in Pink was shot as a one-off rather than a series pilot, but was later re-made. While it's been decried in some quarters as being low budget, it's still quite good. In fact, the original ending is far more moving than in the remake, with Watson standing pensively in the shadows after having rescued his new friend, Sherlock.)

As with the Hardys, Frank and Joe, and my Fairfax series, featuring Brad and his blue-haired amour Zachary, the series really is about the pairing of the two men. The crime and the criminals come second. But make no mistake, these crimes and their solutions are dead clever. They have to be, for that is the essence of Sherlock Holmes.

Still, it's the interplay of Holmes, all reason, and Watson, the long-suffering that makes everything work. The pairing propels us along with them, envious and yearning to share in their adventures for real, while wishing we had friends as true as these. That’s the secret of Sherlock.

Jeffrey Round is a Toronto writer and filmmaker. His most recent book is the mystery-thriller Lake On The Mountain, from Dundurn Books. Visit: www.jeffreyround.com.

Under the Havana Moon

Every few years, I fall in love with a city. Last time it was New Orleans. It wasn't love at first sight, though. I had to go back a second time to be sure. Despite Katrina's lingering devastation, it was an amazing place. The time before, it was Paris--all that splendour. So it makes sense that a cross between the two would do it for me.

Havana did.

The city's contradictions defy you at every turn: vibrant and laid-back, squalid and beautiful, rundown yet visually awesome, poor but very, very safe. Fascinating, is how I describe it.

It helps to have some Spanish at your command, as well as a reliable companion. I had both. At the airport, I met an Australian surfer. I'll call him Charlie Dingo. Charlie has a nose for adventure. He's what's known in the vernacular as a "chick magnet." Despite our disparate backgrounds, we clicked. It was like having an instant friend, only with no history. Thanks to Charlie, I met some very fun Cubans. Thanks to me, Charlie knew what they were saying. Together, it guaranteed a great time.

I like my hotels clean, spacious and quiet. El Paseo Habana in Vedado offers that and more. It's a 15-minute walk from La Rampa, a lively cultural area, and a leisurely hour from Habana Vieja, the city's main tourist destination. If you're looking for a beach, however, don't stay there. It's considerably farther from Playas del Este.

Unlike me, Charlie is not a hotel guy. He wanted una experiencia verdad--the real thing. So we set out to find him a casa particular, the new capitalist trend for Cuban families with a spare room to rent. Basically, they're government sanctioned B&Bs.

In my experience, Cubans are not naturally friendly and out-going. They're reserved, like Canadians. It's only as we went from casa to casa that we got to meet some locals. An offer of coffee here, an invitation for rum later on--and suddenly you have a social life in Havana. It can be very rewarding.

Walking is the best way to see the city. There's also a good $5 double-decker bus tour, but it's pretty fast and you won't catch much of the English commentary--grammatically correct, but spoken at breakneck speed. Just enjoy the sights then go back later and visit whatever looked interesting.

Mastering the currency might prove difficult. It bewildered me. First, there's the CUP, or moneda nacional. It's the only legitimate currency. No one wants it. The alternative is the convertible peso, or CUC. If someone seems to be asking for "cook", that's what they're talking about. It's also called "divisa", which makes it really confusing. That and the fact that the two currencies are vastly different in value.

Visitors make the mistake of thinking there are two price listings for everything and that locals pay less. Not true. If the price is listed in CUP, anyone can pay in CUP or CUC. If you pay in CUC, however, you're paying more. When the price is in CUC, there's no choice: everyone must pay in CUC. But does it really matter whether you're paying thirty cents or a dollar-twenty for a beer? Charlie might disagree, but then Australians drink a lot of beer.

As racist as it sounds, many Cubans will try to cheat you. It's a national pastime and done without malice. Ask the price first and always count your change. I've even been short-changed in the CADECAs, or Casas de Cambio, while exchanging money. On the other hand, you can always bargain for things. Charlie was better at it than me, so I let him do the "no entiendo" thing and waited to see how far he got before I entered the game to nail the price.

One of the things that may surprise you is how literate Cubans are. On Calle Obispo, Old Havana's famed market street, I came across five bookstores, as well as a gigantic used-book stall. At first I put it down to a lack of cable TV, but after visiting several Cuban homes I realized this wasn't the case. What they don't have is Internet. WiFi is all but non-existent, so everyone reads. If you're desperate, some hotels offer on-line access for up to $10 CUC per hour. It's slow, so don't expect to spend all your time checking Facebook.

Nightlife can vary. During the week, clubs tend to close around midnight, though you can always find something happening on the street, legal or otherwise. (Charlie was always good for that.) The police tend to harass the locals rather than the tourists when anything untoward happens, but keep your wits about you.

There are plenty of nightclubs. Some are fancier than others. Nearly everyone gets dressed up, however, and Cubans really know how to dance. As for music, you'd be just as entertained by stopping to listen to a free concert (you'll hear them, especially on weekends) as you would by paying to go to a jazz club. The free concerts are very impressive. In another country, some of these people would be top dollar talent.

There is almost no visible LGBT culture, and Cubans are both sexist and macho in their manner and speech. On the other hand, once you get to know them, they will happily trot out their cell phones and show you pictures of their friends and ask you to guess which of the beautiful girls are real and which not. Again, it can be confusing.

There's one big LGBT party every weekend, but it moves around to avoid being busted. Both film director Pedro Almadovar and designer Jean Paul Gaultier have been netted in raids at gay gatherings. (Presumably, they survived.) You might meet someone on the Playas del Este to tell you where to find these events, or sometimes at Cine Yara on La Rampa. I'm not a beach person so I didn't venture that far. Besides, I didn't go to Havana to spend all my time doing what I do at home.

In fact, my primary reason for going was to check out the possibility of setting one of my Bradford Fairfax comic mysteries there. Luck, and Charlie Dingo, were with me. I had some of the best adventures I've had in a long time, and most of it quickly spun itself into a plot long before I boarded my plane home. So if you're a fan, keep your eyes open for Fairfax International: Havana Club in the future. Once I get around to writing it, of course.

Hasta la vista, baby!