Mark Richard Zubro

"One would think teaching would be a quiet profession. But not in Chicago, thinks high school teacher Tom Mason, when he hears that one of his students has been accused of killing his girlfriend. As a friend of the boy's family, Tom is asked to help clear him, and the more he probes, the more it seems that something sinister is going on in the usually quiet suburbs of Chicago. With the aid of his lover Scott Carpenter, a professional baseball player,...

Simple Suburban Murder is the book that started it all--the debut novel of Lambda Literary Award winner Mark Richard Zubro. When a gay high school teacher starts investigating a colleague's murder, he finds beneath the calm veneer of his Midwestern suburb a seamy underbelly of gambling, prostitution, and child abuse.

Craig Lenzati, the rich and powerful CEO of Chicago's answer to Microsoft, is found brutally murdered with stab wounds all over his body. The murder is reported anonymously, and a quick and quiet resolution to the case is demanded by City Hall. Meanwhile, the list of suspects is almost endless and that along has the powers-that-be breathing down the necks of Chicago Police Detectives Paul Turner and Buck Fenwick. But as the two struggle to untangle...

Tom Mason, Chicago area high school teacher, has been teaching at Grover Cleveland High School for a while - long enough to loathe the faculty meetings and long enough to know that as bad as they are, they aren't fatal. Usually. Having had all he can take of the endless bickering, picking and factional disputes, he sneaks out of the meeting for a short break only to find the meeting over when he returns, the usual suspects having departed to the four...

Paul Turner is not your typical middle-aged cop. A widower, he lives with his two teenaged sons, and he is gay. He is also trusted by the brass to handle sensitive cases, so when a Chicago Alderman is found murdered, Turner is assigned to the case. The dead Alderman was not only a professor at the University of Chicago, but also a leading liberal gadfly with the media's ear. As Turner investigates, he discovers that jealous professors and old-guard...