Michael Craft is the author of the acclaimed “Mark Manning” series of mystery novels, three of which were finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. More recently, his 2019 mystery, ChoirMaster, was a Gold Winner of the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award. Desert Getaway, the upcoming first novel in his new Dante & Jazz series, is based on his Palm Springs Noir short story VIP Check-In, praised as “delightful” by the Los Angeles Times.
Dante O’Donnell is white, gay and getting older every day. He has wasted his better years on starstruck dreams and the wrong men, so now he's working as a concierge for a vacation-rental outfit in Palm Springs, where the guests have far more baggage than just what's packed in their suitcases. But when he finds a dead body floating in the swimming pool of one of his rentals, his own troubled past comes back to haunt him.