Nick D’Amato is turning forty this year. A Vice detective in the South Bronx, New York City, police department, Nick has devoted almost twenty years to his job, but now he’s beginning to slow down a little bit. Instead of playing the field in romance, he is beginning to turn his thoughts to settling down with that one someone special. This is not as easy as it may seem, though. For the past nine months, Nick has been having an affair with one of his informants – a younger hustler who goes by the name of Squeak but whose name is actually William. Nick may want to settle down, but William is happy with his job and has no intentions of giving up prostitution for anyone.

When young girls begin to show up murdered and mangled beyond recognition in his district and Nick finds out that they are “working girls” from his district, he uses his contacts to look for leads to the killer. Soon the killer starts to target male prostitutes, and Nick begins to worry in earnest about his lover William, whose refusal to give up his livelihood has already put a kink in their relationship. Can Nick convince William to come in off the streets for his own protection? When the day comes that William doesn’t answer his telephone and Nick’s queries turn up the fact that no one has seen him for days, it seems like a lost cause.

Dancing in the Dark by Jenna Byrnes places its two heroes in an almost impossible position. A hustler and a vice cop do not exactly make for an ideal couple, and when the situation is complicated with denial and stubbornness on both sides, it is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Ms. Byrnes pulls the reader in to the story so that they care about what happens to these characters. Nick is a confused and emotional wreck, and worrying that his lover is going to be killed by the murderer he is chasing only exacerbates matters. On one hand, he is ashamed of his relationship with a prostitute. On the other, he wants to marry William and introduce him to his family. Although William is not quite the sympathetic character that Nick is, the reader sees that even with his multiple issues he is Nick’s heart’s desire. Ms. Byrnes builds the suspense in the story masterfully, and by the climax the tension is so tight that it might just snap. This reader was glued until the very end, which is most definitely a good thing.

Reviewed by: Whitney