The Mojave Gimmick

Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap.

When Pike briefly returns from an extended undercover job, Slater manages to get mixed up in the case, scuffling with a drug-dealing motorcycle gang, then pulled into working with one of the bikers as well as with Brian and Thorpe, bougie suburbanites that he can’t quite figure out. Smoke-show Brian puts out but misleads him at every turn, and Thorpe has regular contact with ghosts, dragging Slater into her world of psychic channeling. Fists fly and the booze flows as the case leads him into the empty wildlands of the Mojave Desert. When a plan unfolds to permanently bench him, Slater employs his surveillance tech and his wits to try to survive it without putting Pike’s life in danger, and maybe, if things go just right, to exact sweet revenge.

Freelance investigator Slater trolls the dark side of Los Angeles, rooting out insurance fraud, not afraid to use whatever means necessary to get things done, and not about to hold back with his fists. A queer antihero for a new age, Slater walks the line between ordinary life and the frayed fringes of society, keeping his balance with the back-channel support he gets from main squeeze Pike, business partner Max, and operatives Andy and Etta.