DavidAlanDedin's profile

I’m David.

I’m a partnered gay man, currently living in the western Chicago suburbs, in a remodeled Queen Anne with a wraparound porch, a ghost that plays with my cat, and a first-floor office with windows that overlook the local historic preservation district.

June will mark my 5-year anniversary with Barnes & Noble, and I’ve worked as a manager in three different stores, in two separate states.  

I’ve just completed my first novel, A POTENTIAL TO KILL, an edgy mystery disguised as a Preston/Child thriller, with a subject matter not for the faint of heart.

In 1980 Peoria, Illinois, a gay man is murdered in the old Beekman Place Hotel.  The event is both premeditated & vicious, and the killer has left behind two “u…

I’m David.

I’m a partnered gay man, currently living in the western Chicago suburbs, in a remodeled Queen Anne with a wraparound porch, a ghost that plays with my cat, and a first-floor office with windows that overlook the local historic preservation district.

June will mark my 5-year anniversary with Barnes & Noble, and I’ve worked as a manager in three different stores, in two separate states.  

I’ve just completed my first novel, A POTENTIAL TO KILL, an edgy mystery disguised as a Preston/Child thriller, with a subject matter not for the faint of heart.

In 1980 Peoria, Illinois, a gay man is murdered in the old Beekman Place Hotel.  The event is both premeditated & vicious, and the killer has left behind two “unexplainable” clues: Coca-Cola (circa 1903, made with cocaine instead of caffeine); and Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Clove Cigarettes, a brand that hasn’t existed since 1897.  Both clues are as fresh as if made today, but with no match to fingerprints, the case is never solved.

Twenty-seven years later, Frankie Downs arrives in Peoria, driving the same car used in the 1980 murder.  A functional alcoholic, Downs is already buzzed by the time he reaches Beekman Place, the subject of his next feature in “OldPlaces” magazine.  He spends the day touring the site, learning its strange history, and of course, drinking.  With a black cigarette holder clenched between her teeth, Libby, the Ruth Gordon like-landlady, avoids all direct questions about the hotel’s elevator.

At a reception later that night, Downs hits it off with Andy Conner, a gay tenant.  An S&M encounter ensues. When Downs leaves the hotel (staggering drunk) in the wee hours, Conner is still alive.  The next morning, Conner is dead, in the same style, same hotel, with the same clues as 27 years before.  Unfortunately for Frankie, in addition to being a suspect today, his fingerprints ALSO match the 1980 crime-

But he is NOT the killer!

A Potential to Kill is a 408 page, 235,000-word page turner.  It’s a mystery so devious, it’s disguised as a STILL LIFE WITH CROWS-style thriller, hooking the reader in the first few paragraphs with an elevator accident on New Years Eve, 1919.  With the bodies piling fast, and the police in hot pursuit, the book gathers an ensemble of characters whose lives are interconnected by a single, shared moment of unspeakable tragedy. (Think Jodi Picoult.) Against the hot red lights of the big city leather scene, the plot unfolds, splits, and unfolds again, building to multiple payoffs before a bone-chilling finale reveals the real story that has been secretly playing in the background from the very first page…

My book marks the end of an 11-year writing project.  I have crafted my first novel carefully, taking advantage of my position as a Barnes & Noble manager, to observe and define my target audience.  A Potential to Kill will appeal to readers of Stephen King, Clive Cussler, Chuck Palahniuk, Preston, Child, and Picoult (among many others).  My book is also designed to bridge the gap between “traditional” and “gay themed” fiction, a vast & growing audience, inadequately represented on my employer’s present shelves.