A murder mystery narrated by the victim, Dual: A Love Story concerns Gerry Martinez, a New York City police detective assigned to the Queens County Prosecutor’s Office, who is investigating the murder of a New York photographer, committed presumably by his wife. Complicating matters, the wife has a twin, a virtual clone down to her DNA, and the prosecution’s challenge is to definitively prove which of the exotically beautiful twins committed the murder. Gerry finds himself drawn into a deepening mystery involving a large, politically connected family hiding a closely-held secret they are all willing to lie and, possibly, kill to protect. Gerry runs afoul of the U.S. State Department and incurs the wrath of a mysterious death squad who come gunning for him as he begins to unravel the mystery the family is so determined to hide. In the midst of it all, Gerry finds himself inescapably drawn first to one of the twins, then the other; discovering that, to fall in love with one is to fall in love with them both. And, falling in love with them both can get you killed.
Themes: the meaning of family, the relevance of love, romantic police/crime drama. 92,000 words / 28 Chapters / 300 pages. Recommended for mature readers. Includes explicit language and sexual content.
This novel was inspired by the late Elmore Leonard’s eclectic humanism; a kind of gathering of imbeciles from which description the antihero himself is not excluded. As with my previous work, Zion, we again visit the theme of love—love as part of the supporting cast—and the myriad ways this particular form of insanity can derail lives or, in this specific case, entire countries. I am not, in any way, counting Mr. Leonard as any sort of peer; I am, after all, just a comic book guy stirring a toe in the pool of novelists. I’m just saying Leonard’s work is amazing fun and it is the voice I am, in my own way, echoing by this (literal) dead man’s tale.