Flight DreamsBy Michael Craft4 stars“Flight Dreams,” the first of Michael Craft’s Mark Manning Mysteries was published in 1997, which is antique—last century!—in this online book review world. But Craft’s husband is a Facebook, and when he realized that I review lots of books, he asked if I knew Michael’s books.I’ll jump at any excuse to read something new, and especially a genre I have loved since Joseph Hansen caught my imagination in the 1970s. I focus on gay lit in my recreational reading for a reason, and a lot of that stems from how important his kind of writing was to me as a newly-out student in the 1970s. Craft, when I friended him, worried that I’d be harsh on this, his first mystery novel. I love it when people are afraid of me. It’s so ridiculous.This book is flawed, for sure. But it deserves four stars in spite of its flaws. I have already bought the second volume in the series, “Body Language,” because I was anxious to see what would happen next. If I want to keep reading when I’m done, it’s a good thing.Craft is a stylish, literate writer, salting his prose with wry elegance such as this: “The lady with the novel flaps a silk fan. She is the only one present to take action against the heat; the others suffer passively, racking up purgatorial credits in some celestial ledger.”The mystery, focused on the disappearance seven years previously of Helena Carter, a Chicago airline heiress, is engaging enough, if a little contrived. Through Mark Manning’s investigation—made under some urgency over his career and his reputation—Craft allows us to meet all of the players, past and present, in Mrs. Carter’s life. We are given, bit by bit, a complex backstory that offers a broad landscape of incident and psychological detail. There is a sort of weird stylistic thing, using the present tense in the first person. I got used to it, but it’s not the most comfortable narrative style for me. My biggest problem with the book, for at least 60 per cent of it, anyway, was Mark himself. I got over it, eventually, but not without a good deal of discomfort about his character. Mark is 39, handsome, and really really well built (Craft rather overemphasizes that he doesn’t LOOK nearly forty, which for someone my age is really really tiresome. And don’t get me started on the 56-year-old Helena Carter being referred to as an “old lady.” Grrr). Manning is also hugely self-assured. Obnoxiously self-assured, I’d go so far as to say. I think I see why Craft did this, but it’s off-putting. You see, Mark Manning totally believes in himself without hesitation—except about his sexuality, apparently. One of the main thrusts (no pun intended) of the book’s plot is Mark’s coming to grips with a part of himself that he has successfully suppressed all of his life. Apparently, he’s never once considered sex with a man, in spite of being totally hot and successful and a public persona. I guess his Kinsey 4 ability to do it with women has allowed him to hide himself from himself. Way to piss off a Kinsey 6, you smug bastard.This sort of panicky closetedness just seems at odds with the kind of man his age in 1997 who is both confident in his beliefs and sure of his abilities—but not, oddly enough, homophobic. Indeed, to my mind both Manning and his best friend Roxanne Exner (great name, BTW) feel like characters stolen out of a gay angst novel from the 1970s, when I was in my twenties and coming out with a vengeance. Roxanne is an interesting woman, just as strong and self-assured as Mark is. But her jealousy of Mark’s friendship, which crossed a few boundaries once upon a time, turns her into a thoroughly unpleasant character for a good chunk of the book, culminating in one of the least enjoyable scenes I’ve ever read. I physically shuddered as I plowed through it, echoes of Ayn Rand’s nasty Howard Roark flickering through my imagination. Effective, I guess, but unpleasant. But, ultimately I forgave both Manning and Roxanne, because Craft does something very good with his thread of the narrative, which runs parallel to the mystery line. Craft gives us Neil, the beautiful and very out younger architect from Phoenix, whose college friendship with Roxanne adds a sharp edge to the awkward triangle. But it is Neil who forces Mark to look inward. Although this comes very close to what the M/M fiction world refers to as a “gay for you” moment; Craft handles it with emotional fluency. Manning begins to redeem himself with lines like this:“But the label scares me. Even if no one else knew, I would. I’d be waiting there with the label, and I don’t know what it would do to me.”It still feels awfully 1970s to me, but at least we are seeing a human, vulnerable Mark Manning. For all his stiffness (Craft never manages to really relax him—I’ll be curious to see how that evolves in the rest of the series), Mark is not surprised by his homosexuality, so much as afraid of it. This refreshing self-doubt creates a dynamic that is honest and believable. Neil’s own brand of serene self-worth and his gifts as an architect (again, shades of Howard Roark!) become the catalysts for what is a genuinely effective romantic subplot. Thank God.One of the oddest of the book’s surprises was the cats. Abyssinians, to be precise. If you don’t know what these are, you’ll learn just enough to add a strange little bit of unexpected flavor to the story. How Craft stumbled onto this as a plot device I have no idea, but I found myself looking up these exotic, beautiful creatures online because of Craft’s writing about them. This is why I love the Internet.There is suspense enough and romantic interest enough to pull the reader through this story, in spite of stylistic peculiarities and the above-noted character-based annoyances. Craft messaged me on Facebook and told me that he’d learned a lot about writing in the seventeen years since this book appeared. Of this I have no doubt, and with this as a first try, I’m very hopeful that I’ll enjoy the others even more.
This was quite an enjoyable story. It was first published in 1998 and so I think it would be unfair to judge it against the kind of gay literature that we have today. Today there is a plethora of stories with gay main characters. We now have popular gay romance (m/m), gay mysteries, gay contemporary fiction, as well as so many urban fantasy, and paranormal series which have gay characters. The writing environment for gay literature has become highly diverse and very competitive.Having said all that I don't think this story falls short in any way but I just think readers of mm should be aware that this is a little different. First of all this is a mystery story. The main focus is about a missing heiress and the fact that certain parties want her to be declared dead so that they can inherit her money. Mark Manning is a journalist and a lone voice in the wilderness because he believes the heiress - Helena Carter is still lives.What follows then is a race against time as Mark seeks to discover what has happened to Helena. Along the way he meets a host of characters all with their different agendas. He also meets a man that he falls in love with and he meets plenty of cats. It is a great story, with a good pace. It does have a strong anti - religious feel to it which some times felt a bit too over emphasised.The romance between Mark and Neil was nice. It was gentle and loving but it wasn't the 'story'. It was a minor story line but an interesting one because it showed Mark coming to terms with his own sexuality and allowing himself to fall in love with another man.The mystery itself wasn't too hard to figure out but seeing how all the characters were woven into the story enriched the story and gave it so many interesting perspectives.The only thing I didn't like about the story was the present tense. It felt kind of uneven in places and was a little distracting but once I got into the rhythm of the story it was ok.This is the first book in a series and I definitely want to read more. It is set up to be an interesting series with a very interesting protagonist.
Do You like book Flight Dreams (2000)?
Original Blog Post: http://headouttheoven.blogspot.com/20...I am currently in the mood for mysteries and thrillers and few fluffies on the side. I saw this offered in Netgalley and found it interesting. Knowing this was written in 1998, some date it 1997, I thought to compare the writing style of the present MM writers to that period when LGBTQ media were not only unheard of by most of the population but also frowned upon. I would just like to point out that Open Road Media is currently very active in re-publishing these older books and re-introducing these authors to the new generation LGBT fans like myself. This is a mystery thriller and in the middle of it are Mark and Neil who meet and fall for each other. I guess this is the start of a beautiful relationship for the succeeding books still involve these two men. Mark is a hotshot reporter and is basically considered the newspaper's golden boy. He gets involved in a mystery involving the cold case of an heiress' disappearance. He has no filter whatsoever and makes it known to one and all his opinions, no matter if the listener does not want to. The setting is at a time when cigarette smoking was beginning to be frowned upon and yet still widely accepted so it was kind of a flashback setting for me.The character and plot developments were well done and the sequence of events well paced. It leaves no room for boredom to set in, something I find quite common in many mystery or thriller novels. For a book that is neither a slash-and-gore type, it was quite graphic so it was not difficult to get a visual on what Mark was seeing, thinking and experiencing. This is just the beginning of the series and already it establishes the feel of the succeeding books. For those who like mystery-thrillers and a romance between two hot men on the side, this is quite an appealing book to consider. It took me some time to read this thinking it was a setting I would not be too interested in, but I opened this and saw that it was a great way to spend some time before going to bed. Great read and will definitely pick up the next books.Review based on a copy provided through Netgalley by Open Road Media.
—multitaskingmomma
"Flight Dreams" by Michael Craft is a well written crime story centred around Mark Manning, an investigative journalist who is convinced that airline heiress Helena Carter is still alive. He has three months to prove it to save his career. After that she will be declared dead and her fortune will be given to the Catholic Church.On the way he and his side kick figure out their sexual chemistry.The book is a good set up for the rest of the series, the characters, the story and the pace all showed great potential and with the added gay romance sub-plot this should satisfy an under-saturated market of mainstream gay fiction.
—Christoph Fischer
The online rating system is kind of skewed in that if you start a book and don't finish it because you don't like it you usually just don't review it. This system leaves fewer one star reviews.Well here's my one star review. I got to 25% and began skimming heavily and got to 35% and stopped. The story is not interesting, the main character unlikable, there's no action, someone not exploring their homosexuality until age 40 seemed homophobic to me for some reason, it was a chore to continue reading.
—Adam Dunn
