Total Meltdown: A Tripler and Clarke Adventure

by Raymond Gaynor, William Maltese

President-Elect Mathias "Alexander the Great" Jackson learns on election eve that the current President has resigned with over a trillion dollars in petroleum securities, leaving the US leaderless and facing an economic crisis of unparalleled proportions. President Jackson, wrongly accused of manufacturing the crisis, turns to his two must trusted political aides, Adelphous Tripler and Shawn Clarke. Committed lovers, Tripler and Clarke must reluctantly separate to carry out a series of incredibly challenging tasks for their discredited leader that takes them around the globe. With murder and mayhem facing them every step of the way, will they manage to get back to each other alive?

162 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Raymond Gaynor is the pen-name of a multi-award-winning, reclusive author-actor-artist-photographer-videographer, who, in his own words, "lives and breathes" San Francisco. He is co-author with William Maltese on the Tripler and Clarke gay political thriller, TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2011) and co-author with A. G. Hayes of QUANTUM DEATH (Savant 2016) in addition to numerous fiction and non-fiction works published under a variety of pseudonyms. His latest work is THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020), a future relationship novel depicting a challenging and dangerous future place for three young firebrands to live. As lead actor, he is currently in filming of the K. Simmons Productions' "The STATIC Movie - Honolulu" (https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie) scheduled for release nationwide in mid to late September 2021.

Reviews

[Elisa Rolle]

There was a time, more or less between the ‘80s and ‘90s when the political thriller was an huge hit, and I liked it, but truth be told, they were “heavy” books: thousand and thousands of pages and seldom an author was so good to be able to not be at least a little boring in all those pages. I think Gaynor and Maltese together found a good way to not fall in the same mistake, and they indeed wrote a political thriller packed of characters, but it’s all condensed 160 pages, so that, in the end, you don’t have time to be bored. And another thing I noticed, and liked, was that the novel is indeed “packed”, but of characters and not so much of crush-bum-bam actions: it’s more a play of man to man, than man to machine, and in every meaning of the two words together, since there is also a lot of man to man action of the sex type.

Basically the story evolves around two men, Tripler and Clarke (surname as in the best political thriller tradition), couple in life and work. They are already together, and they already click in all the right ways, so the story is not about how they fell in love, but it’s about them and the outside world. Their best friend from College, Mathias “Matty” Jackson, is the new President of the United States, and he is having big trouble; Tripler and Clarke come to help, like cavalry in a Western novel, and with them there is also Philippe Moreau, a Canadian diplomat and Tripler’s connection. Matty and Philippe are not gay, Matty is married, and basically happy, with a little Asian jewel, and Philippe is wooing another Canadian politic, Amelie. This allows the novel to not be strictly gay, but indeed, Tripler and Clarke are the most interesting characters, and so they steal the scene to all the other. Aside from them, there are a lot of other more or less important supporting characters, some of them playing along the line of the evil villain, like the South American tyrant, and some other being a bit of a surprise, like the South Arabian king.

In the midst of an international chaos, there is not so much time for love, but Tripler and Clarke are able to find it, and even when they are not together, it’s really nice and tender to see how the apparently stronger of the two, Tripler, is indeed the one who suffers much the distance. When they are together, Tripler is always near Clarke, he needs the physical connection, and not only in a sexual way.

I think Total Meltdown will surprise a lot the romance reader who will be willing to give it a try, and I can’t talk for the political-thriller fans, I’m not really among them, but I think that also on that side, there is a lot of meat for them.

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