In Tricks, Rick Reed moves from the crime/horror genre in which he has made a name for himself to give us a romance novel, and he does it well. To be sure, we still find the familiar hot m/m action, a plot that involves a crime, and the overall dark mood, but his principal focus here is on the emotional attachment and an evolving relationship. Yes, Arliss and Sean have terrific sex, but they have something else going, and that something else is important to them both.

On the surface, the two men couldn’t be more different. Sean comes from a stable, supportive, middle class family; he’s thirty-seven years old, respectable, has a good job and looks at life realistically. In short, he is a grownup – a grown up, I may add, who doesn’t hop into bed with men he doesn’t know (although one date, apparently, will suffice). Arliss has run away from an abusive, homophobic home in rural Florida and supports himself as a stripper and hustler in the Chicago gay scene Reed knows well and can describe better than anyone. At twenty-one, he’s still a kid, a dreamer, and he looks his emotional age.

The two are keenly aware of these differences and see it as a problem. Although it feels right, neither sees it as a good fit. Yet without explicitly saying so, Reed shows us that they are right for each other. Both need and long for a committed relationship; both think their relationship can’t possibly last. Arliss thinks he isn’t good enough for Sean because he’s always lived on the outskirts of society, while Sean, no less insecure, thinks he isn’t handsome enough for a hot number like Arliss.

Differences in status, education, age, looks, etc., are far from insurmountable when the affection is real. Insecurity and judgmentalism make for a whole other ballgame. Sean’s jealousy and Arliss’s dreams of making a killing in the porn industry come into conflict when Arliss is offered a starring role in a sex flick, and the break seems irreparable. And it would be, if they were cardboard figures, true to type rather than to themselves.

Arliss quickly discovers he has bitten off more than he can chew and turns to Sean for help. Sean struggles with the hurt of Arliss’s “defection” before he realizes that the man he cares for is more important than his principles, and once he makes up his mind, he finds that Arliss has got himself into deeper doo-doo than he imagined and pulling him out of it will be anything but easy.

For some reason, Reed waits until the last moment to reveal the exact nature of the danger facing Arliss. While the plot requires his protagonists not to know, keeping it from us seems more like a hangover from his mystery fiction than a build-up of suspense. This reader, at least, had it figured it out long before. The bad guys discuss their intentions more than once, and I found it unconvincing that they should do so ambiguously. What do they have to hide from each other?

MLR Press, October 2010

ISBN 978-1-60272-799-3 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-60820-215-7 (e-book)

 

Stanley Ridge is a mild-mannered man who likes to shoot his mouth off.  This may be attributed to his New York origins, his zest for life, a deep-seated unhappiness with the current political situation, or all of the above.  His tastes in literature are as varied and unpredictable as his taste in men.  With the latter, however, he has a definite favorite and except for him only looks at the covers.  He has not even thumbed the pages in nearly seven years.  In addition to his duties as an editor for two m2m on-line literary magazines, he spends much of his spare time his own writing and to literary translation.

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The two are keenly aware of these differences and see it as a problem. Although it feels right, neither sees it as a good fit. Yet without explicitly saying so, Reed shows us that they are right for each other. Both need and long for a committed relationship; both think their relationship can’t possibly last. Arliss thinks he isn’t good enough for Sean because he’s always lived on the outskirts of society, while Sean, no less insecure, thinks he isn’t handsome enough for a hot number like Arliss.