cover image Love You to Death

Love You to Death

Grant Michaels. St. Martin's Press, $18.95 (244pp) ISBN 978-0-312-07027-4

``The seafood was beginning to look a little tired,'' notes partygoing hairdresser Stan Kraychik, narrator of the second gay mystery by the author of A Body to Dye For : the seafood, unfortunately, has company. Michaels's unimaginative plotting is none too peppy, and what passes for smart banter is neither. When someone trifles with the truffles at a tony reception for Godiva wannabe Le Jardin Chocolatier, death breaks up the party. Typical of the author's fondness for overclarification, the character serving the goodies ``was extra careful about who got which plate.'' Additionally, tepid sexual innuendos show up, as if on cue, on practically every other page: Vannos (Stan's nom de coiffure ) burns his mouth on too-hot coffee, ``unlike the last man I dated--six months ago.'' Two more characters bite the dust before the culprit obligingly commits suicide, by which time readers may be stifling yawns. A minor subplot involving Stan's stint as baby-sitter for a precocious four-year-old is not only pointless but offensive. Even the chapter titles here are recycled, from ``Cherchez La Femme'' to the punny ``Down the Gardner Path.'' (Mar.)