Knock Off the Hat, Richard Stevenson
Knock Off the Hat, Richard Stevenson
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Knock Off the Hat
A Clifford Waterman Gay Philly Mystery

Author: Richard Stevenson

Narrator: Justin Price

Unabridged: 6 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/05/2024


Synopsis

Lambda Literary Award-winning author delves into the sudden and extraordinary wave of gay-bashing in 1940s Philadelphia.

It's steaming August in post-war Philadelphia. Clifford Waterman, dishonorably discharged from the Army for "an indecent act with a native" in Cairo, can't go back to his job as a police detective and is struggling to make a go of it as a private investigator. He's soon hired to help a young man caught in a gay bar raid who can't afford the $500 bribe a corrupt judge demands to make a "morals charge" go away.

In the blink of an eye, an entire gay neighborhood is suddenly under siege, and Waterman has to find out why the cops, courts, and the city powers that be have unleashed a wave of brutal gay-bashing—astonishing even for that time and place.

Kept moving by Jim Beam, bluesy jazz, and a stubborn sense of outsider's pride, Waterman makes his way through Philadelphia's social, political, and financial swamp to rescue a few unlucky souls and inflict at least a bit of damage to the rotten system that would lead to the Stonewall rebellion in New York City twenty-two years later.

About Richard Stevenson

Richard Stevenson is the pseudonym of Richard Lipez, author of eighteen books, including the Donald Strachey Private Eye series. A former editorial writer at the Berkshire Eagle, he currently reviews mysteries and thrillers for the Washington Post. His reporting, reviews, and fiction have appeared in Newsday, Harper's Magazine, Redbook, the Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and The Progressive, among others.

Between the years 2005 and 2008, Shavick Entertainment adapted four of the Donald Strachey novels into films for the LGBT television network, Here! Additionally, four of Stevenso's Strachey mysteries were shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award for gay mystery, with Red White Black and Blue winning in 2011. Richard grew up and was educated in Pennsylvania, and taught in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia. He is married to sculptor and video artist Joe Wheaton and lives in Becket, Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Shawn

Fun and historically interesting, but not up to the Strachey series standard.......more