Benjamin Justice Returns!
25th Anniversary Revised Edition
LOS ANGELES—John Morgan Wilson’s celebrated Benjamin Justice series, whose debut novel “SIMPLE JUSTICE” won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, returns in a revised edition marking its 25th Anniversary.
Michael Bronski, Out Magazine
“Politically pungent, exactly observed, and conceding little comfort, Wilson is heir to the shockingly unsentimental vision of Patricia Highsmith.”
It’s 1994, an election year when violent crime is rampant, voters want action, and politicians smell blood. When a Latino teenager confesses to the murder of a pretty-boy cokehead outside a gay bar in L.A., the cops consider the case closed. But Benjamin Justice, a disgraced former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, sees something in the jailed boy others don’t. His former editor, Harry Brofsky, now toiling at the rival Los Angeles Sun, pries Justice from his alcoholic seclusion to help neophyte reporter Alexandra Templeton dig deeper into the story. But why would a seemingly decent kid confess to a brutal gang initiation killing if he wasn’t guilty? And how can Benjamin Justice possibly be trusted, given his central role in the Pulitzer scandal that destroyed his career? Snaking his way through shadowy neighborhoods and dubious suspects, he’s increasingly haunted by memories of his lover Jacques, whose death from AIDS six years earlier precipitated his fall from grace. As he unravels emotionally, Templeton attempts to solve the riddle of his dark past and ward off another meltdown as they race against a critical deadline to uncover and publish the truth.
“An exceptionally fine debut. Ben Justice is … a more human and real character than most mystery sleuths.”
Booklist
“Wilson writes with such skill, pluck, and conviction that it becomes both suspenseful and moving. Sexy, too.”
Washington Post Book World
John Morgan Wilson is a veteran journalist, TV news and documentary writer, and fiction writer. Simple Justice (1996) launched his Benjamin Justice mystery series, earning an Edgar Allan Poe Award (AKA “the Edgar”) from Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel. Three other Justice titles in the eight-book series won Lambda Literary Awards for best gay men’s mystery; six were nominated. His short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Blithe House Quarterly, and numerous anthologies. For thirty years, he served as an instructor with the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. He lives with his longtime companion (now husband), artist Pietro Gamino, in West Hollywood, California, the primary setting for the Benjamin Justice series.
An Edgar Award Winner for Best First Novel in 1996, this revised edition marking the 25th Anniversary of the first release, includes a foreword by Christopher Rice (Bone Music). ReQueered Tales is reissuing Morgan’s eight Justice novels through 2024 in new trade paper editions and several in e-book for the first time.
SIMPLE JUSTICE e-book
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2CsFPIr
US $5.95 • CAN $7.95 • UK £4.95 • EU €5.95 • AU $8.95
Read “free” on Kindle Unlimited
Trade Paperback: https://amzn.to/2CsFPIr
280 pgs • 978-1-951092-30-6
US $16.95 • CAN $21.95 • UK £13.95
