George Clay

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Created by Neil Plakcy
Pseudonyms include Dirk Strong

“I wouldn’t kick Warren Beatty out of bed for eating crackers.”
— George has his preferences

Retro seems to be all the rage, as Florida-based rookie private eye GEORGE CLAY sweats it out in the steamy heat of Miami circa 1968. Very hip, very cool, very retro.

And it’s there we meet George, in his Shamus-nominated novel-length debut, Bless Our Sleep (2024).  He’d already appeared in a slew of short stories, but he’s still occasionally moonlighting as a bouncer at a local gay bar called the Cockpit (there’s a clue), until his one-man detective agency takes off.

But things are looking up —he has have a case. He’s searching for a missing signet ring  The client is wealthy banker Will Broadwater, who suspects Worm, a high school kid he’s been hooking up with… for an occasional blowjob.

Yeah, it’s like that. Surfside 6, this ain’t.

Fresh out of the Navy after six years, twenty-three year old George has a “cheap and dingy” office above Mr. Ho’s Chinese restaurant in Miami Beach, a lime green 1958 Chevrolet Bel-Air, and is at ease enough with his own sexuality that early on in the book he casually mentions that he “knows what it’s like to be a gay man in search of sex.”

His cruising of the pawn shops takes an unexpected turn, however, when he discovers Worm’s body (and the ring) in a nearby local park.

Miami in the sixties is an intriguing setting, and the author doesn’t stint on the sun-blasted local colour, capturing the gambling, the tourism industry, the gay underworld, the real estate frenzy, the distinctive architecture, the Cuban diaspora, the glitz and the tackiness and the graft and corruption (Hey, it’s Florida!) brought on by the burgeoning drug smuggling trade — he works it all in.

Somehow, by predating Miami Vice by a couple of decades and adding a gay twist, Plakcy has made all those Florida stereotypes and tropes fresh again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Inspired by a high school assignment on John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, author and self-confessed Tolkien geek Neil Plakcy set his sights on becoming a writer, which lead to him studying creative writing with Philip Roth and Carlos Fuentes at the University of Pennsylvania, and writing gay porn short stories under the pen name of Dirk Strong for seventy-five bucks a pop.. He went on to receive his MFA from Florida International University. His first published novel was Mahu, about a Honolulu homicide detective dragged out of the closet during a tough case, and he currently writes mystery and romance,, including the long-running Golden Retriever mysteries, inspired by his time walking his pooch Samwise. He currently lives in Hollywood — the one in Florida.

UNDER OATH

  • “Bless Our Sleep is the best kind of classic noir, richly atmospheric with a flawed but sympathetic hero trying to untangle a complex web of money, sex and politics to avenge the murder of an (almost) innocent. There’s nothing sentimental about Bless Our Sleep but it does have heart—the heart Clay wears on his sleeve. I highly recommend this moving and entertaining novel… Expertly plotted, beautifully written, and charged with eroticism.:”
    — Michael Nava

SHORT STORIES

  • “Cabbage Key” (2022, Cupid Shot Me)
  • “Heir Apparent” (2022, Groovy Gumshoes)
  • “Oyster Creek” (2022, Crime Hits Home)
  • “Billie Jean” (2023, Thriller)
  • “Lost Boy” (August 2023, Black Cat Weekly #101)
  • “The Missing Delegate” (2024, Private Dicks and Disco Balls)
  • “The Shandiclere” (July 2024, Black Cat Weekly #150)

NOVELS

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

Published

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