Thunderfoot Press author Mark Spano's new 120-page book, Midland Club, officially released just one month ago, is already receiving rave reviews from critics and readers and remains ranked at 4.3 stars out of five among Amazon Customer Reviews.
"I'm stunned and humbled by the favorable critical responses to Midland Club," Spano said recently. "What, though, is of greater consequence is that the book has struck a chord with its readers. That is surely every writer's ambition."
Set in 1958 in a Midwestern town, Midland Club is a 120-page mystery novel about corruption, lies, and murder. The protagonist, Rich St. Pierre, is compelled to expose the truth about a friend's death knowing he's risking his own life in the process. The protagonist is a gay white man and a member of a highly respected family. The deceased is a gay black man.
The premise intrigued two reviewers with Gaybook Reviews.com. One described the book as "a small jewel...melancholic, lyric, flawlessly smooth and realistic... an excellent piece of gay fiction of exceptional quality."
The other reviewer called the book "a dark and cynical tale that reads like a film noir classic," adding: "The beauty of Midland Club is the telling of the tale, rather than the answer to the mystery...There's a bit of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil amidst the melancholy and I highly recommend this book."
Mark Spano admits that he set Midland Club in his old neighborhood in his hometown, Kansas City, MO. But in his book, he refers to the location only as "a Midwestern city." Yet one Amazon reader, also a Kansas City native, said he immediately recognized the city's "repressive social strictures of decades ago, designed to prevent the intersections of ethnicity, class, and forbidden love at the heart of this tale of passion and loss." Spano "can be proud of his story," he wrote, "as it perfectly captures that place and time to create an engaging work of noir fiction. It kept me reading non-stop until the end, meriting this hearty recommendation."
Another reader echoed that sentiment, adding, "This book is more than just a murder mystery. It speaks to the human condition."
About The Author: Mark Spano is a filmmaker and author of five works of fiction and a memoir. As a filmmaker, his work includes The Quality of Light: A Biography of Claude Howell and the definitive documentary on Sicily, "Reimagining Sicily." He holds advanced degrees from Marymount University of Virginia and the American University in Washington, D.C., and now resides in rural Orange County, North Carolina. (Headshot available on request.) For more information: blog.markspano.com.
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