Flight Dreams (Mark Manning Mystery) - Softcover

Helena Carter, the airline heiress who vanished from her Bluff Shores home seven years ago, is about to be declared dead-- a boon to the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Federated Cat Clubs of America, the unlikely joint beneficiaries of her enormous estate. But Chicago Journal reporter Mark Manning isn't about to join in the festivities. He's never been convinced that Helena has died, and now that his publisher, nettled by a recent Manning column disputed by Manning's influential rival at the Post, has told him he's history if he doesn't produce Helena by New Year's Day, he's under pressure to prove it. The author broadly hints that the trail, unbeknown to Manning, will lead to the archconservative Tridentine Catholic community of the Assumption outside Phoenix. But before Manning can follow that trail to an open-and-shut solution, he'll have to survive a party his onetime lover, attorney Roxanne Exner, throws for the newspaper rivals; come to terms with his own unacknowledged homosexuality; and consummate his languorous relationship with jealous Roxanne's friend Neil Waite, an architect who just happens to live in Phoenix. . . . An enlightened, rational, cat-loving, reluctantly gay hero battles phony TV healers, murderous New Age psychics, and benighted Tridentine Catholics. Imagine the fodder this debut, and the promised series, will provide for the foes of liberal humanism. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Craft's investigative-reporter-cum-(almost)-superhero may leave readers begging for another novel starring the same principals. Craft's Clark Kent (with a gay twist) is Mark Manning. He is a reporter for the fictive Chicago Journal as the story opens. His publisher gives him a deadline of less than 100 days to find heiress Helena Carter, who has been missing for seven years and is about to be declared legally dead. In the course of his investigation, Manning ends up ruling out the Catholic Church, Carter's butler (of course), her sister-in-law (who had an affair with Carter's dead husband), and the Federated Cat Clubs of America (only in a gay novel!) as culpable kidnappers. Amid all this sleuthing, Manning also deals with his latent homosexuality, has almost vengeful sex with a longtime female acquaintance, and falls in love with and makes love to a man. Two very happy endings won't exactly surprise readers, but getting to them is a lot of fun. Delightful. Charles Harmon