The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

The Desert Getaway (Dante and Jazz book 1)
By Michael Craft
Brash Books, 2022
Five stars

I started this book with a shiver of anticipation at the idea of a new series from Michael Craft. I was not disappointed. As always, Craft’s elegant prose and deft drawing of characters gives the story depth, even as his panoramic view (sometimes literal) of Palm Springs, California, and its surrounding communities, firmly sets the place as an intense and vivid background for what turns out to be a fairly substantial body count.

The hook is the relationship between Danny (Dante) O’Donnell and Jasmine (Jazz) Friendly. As enemies from the past, reunited by circumstances eerily similar to those under which they first met, Dante and Jazz begin to shift their attitude toward each other as mayhem starts to draw them into its vortex. It is the core joy of reading this book to watch how these two people develop. Both are quasi failures at the start—Danny due to his fecklessness, Jazz due to failings that are not entirely her fault.

Jazz is a woman who’s had a run of bad luck, exacerbated by poor choices. Dante, on the other hand, seems to have hardly made any conscious choices, but has drifted semi-aimlessly, motivated more by his libido than any sense of purpose. I liked Jazz right away, in spite of her hostile past with Danny. Danny was a problem for me. He’s the archetype of the middle-aged adolescent gay man, lulled into thinking he never has to grow up by good looks and strong genes.

It says a lot about Craft’s skill as a storyteller that I warmed to Danny—but only because Danny actually became a better person—a more self-aware and conscious person. This book is as much about Danny O’Donnell’s adult awakening as anything else. It not only takes him through the increasingly morbid mystery, but sets his character up for the next book with Jazz Friendly as an ally he never imagined having.

In much the same way that his earlier novels felt very much rooted in the northern Midwest where they take place, this story seems so very California. Craft populates it with folks who would be alien in the East or the Midwest. Some of the characters are likeable, some are despicable (in spite of Dante’s fascination, I couldn’t abide Skip Terry, a crucial player in the mystery, although to be honest it might be due to my own prejudices). Others, like Dante’s sometime paramour Isandro, deserve more development (book two, I hope). Craft loves the people who fill his pages, and none of them are accidental or carelessly rendered.
The character of the place itself matters—and I think this distinction is real, in spite of our peripatetic society. There is something about life in Southern California, and in the desert itself, that either draws you in or not. Craft makes you understand the allure. I was fascinated that there’s a museum at the center of the story; one that is both familiar and peculiar for me (who spent my 37-year career as a museum curator and administrator).

I am so glad that this new series has begun, and look forward to getting to know Dante and Jazz better. I can’t imagine what they’ll get up to next.