Mystery men: novelist Christopher Rice interviews fellow writer John Morgan Wilson about his controversial new murder mystery, writing sex scenes, and why gay people love detectives' quest for justice.

Christopher Rice first met John Morgan Wilson in 2001, when both men were nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for gay men's mystery writing--Rice for his first novel, A Density of Souls. "In a year's time I had appeared on The Rosie O'Donnell Show, The Early Show, Extra, and the cover of The Advocate," Rice recalls. "In other words, just about everything had been handed to me on a silver platter. I expected the Lambda awards to be no different. I was wrong." Rice's book lost to The Limits of Justice, the fourth novel in Wilson's mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Benjamin Justice, a tough, battle-scarred openly gay ex-journalist who lives in the heart of West Hollywood, Calif.

More than two years later, Rice, 25, and Wilson, 58, are close friends. One day after a local book fair that Wilson helped to organize, the two WeHo residents met on Wilson's cozy, plant-filled patio to talk about Blind Eye--the just-published fifth Ben Justice novel (Minotaur/St. Martin's Press), in which Justice investigates the pedophilia scandal in the Roman Catholic Church--and to compare notes on writing about sex and death.

Rice: You've written four novels in which your hero takes on wealthy pedophiles, crooked cops, dirty politicians, and now the Catholic Church. A lot of people who wouldn't consider themselves homophobic might assume that a gay man just doesn't have the chops for that kind of stuff.

Wilson: When I wrote that [first] novel [Simple Justice], I never consciously thought, I'm going to write the antithesis of a stereotype, a tough-talking, two-fisted gay sleuth with real backbone. When I started writing, [Ben Justice's] voice rook over; the character was created right there on the page. He emerged as really complex, and what I felt was a real and honest representation of my older, darker alter ego. It's interesting: Sitting right here on this patio a few years ago, I was interviewed by a writer from the Los Angeles Times, and he said [about Ben Justice], "I was really surprised because the reader just has to accept that he's gay, and that's it. There's no apology, no explanation, nothing. He's just who he is." And I said, "Yeah, that's how I wrote him."

Another big question in there is, How politically correct can you be in a mystery? [At the book fair] I was on a panel about sex, and one author described how her sex scenes had been criticized because her character didn't put on a condom. My response was, "If you're looking for role models or standards of acceptable or safe behavior, you shouldn't be reading mysteries." I also think that there's something very organic about Justice's masculinity--that it's very believable that a gay man who's been the victim of lies ha his past, as Justice has been, would go after the truth so ferociously.

I think so many of us, all gay men and women, had to grow up learning how to lie, listening to lies, seeing lies all around us, sometimes lying to survive; it's a horrible way to live. So I think a lot of us may be obsessed with the truth and getting the truth out. And if that means being politically incorrect, I'll go after that from time to time in my books. And yet I have a friend who said, "Of course, all your novels are so politically correct." She's straight, she's narrow-minded, and I realized that to her, the reason [my books] are politically correct is that there are people of various ethnicities. Occasionally somebody turns up in a wheelchair; occasionally there's a transgendered character--to her, that's all "politically correct." To me, it's just the real world.

Political correctness segues into the next issue: pedophilia. You and I as gay mystery novelists are in this precarious position: We've got this horrible stereotype that all gay men are pedophiles and sexual predators, but we work in a genre where pedophilia is almost a convention. I have faced this with my last two books. My fourth novel, The Limits of Justice, dealt with a ring of wealthy pedophiles, and when I was done with that book I really thought I had it out of ray system. But then this Catholic Church thing drove me crazy, and I got an idea for a twist on the sexual abuse scandal that I couldn't get out of my head. It went right back to some of my issues with pedophilia as someone who grew up in a household where there was sexual abuse by a stepfather. It was a lousy way to grow up, and it shattered--literally destroyed--our family. So maybe I'm a little obsessed about it, but when you're a writer you write what you've got to write.

Right.

And I had to write this book, Blind Eye. I take a politically incorrect point of view in the novel, at least from the perspective of some gay activists who feel that gay priests are being scapegoated. My point of view is that children come first, and where were the gay priests--the good gay priests, the innocent gay priests--when all this was going on? They had to know or at least suspect it. Did they stand up for the children? Not that I know of. So I take it a step further, and I'm a pretty harsh judge.

I'm working on a book that involves not so much pedophilia as adophilia, sexual violence or molestation directed toward adolescent boys.

I've never heard that term.

It's a very gray, murky area. I think of the gay community here, where you have young boys with fake IDs going into clubs, but according to the letter of the law, they're too young for you to be sleeping with. And it's about people who push the limits of that. But the reason I think it's in there is that as mystery writers or crime authors or whatever term you want to use, there's a pressure to be current.

I also think that a quest for justice is built into so many gay writers--the quest to overcome oppression, abusive power, abusive wealth, physical oppression--because we've lived it, we know it. We have lived it and seen it in ways that a lot of straight people haven't had to see--unless, for instance, they've been sexually abused. I recently talked to a straight woman who likes my novels very much. She said, "I identify with almost all the issues that you deal with. It doesn't matter that your character is gay." She mentioned sexual abuse and surviving grief in particular--universal themes that resonate with a lot of people.

But some straight readers can be put off by gay sex. When I was promoting A Density of Souls, I got backed against the wall by an interviewer for a college newspaper who kept asking, "Is your next book going to be this sexually explicit?" There were only two sex scenes in the hook, but one of them involved young boys--with one another. And the sexuality Of adolescent boys, for some reason, had tipped this young woman over the edge.

Gay sex scenes in literature will definitely be judged with a double standard by straight reviewers and straight readers. There's no question about it. What's perfectly OK for them between a man and a woman may be revolting and disgusting and graphic [between two men]. And you just have to live with it.

So what's next for Ben Justice?

The next book will be out in October 2004; it's called Moth and Flame. I'm putting Justice on Prozac, and I'm getting him into therapy. He's a very complex, flawed, troubled guy, and I think he deserves a break. I was very touched by a young reader who came to one of my readings and [said] he identified with Benjamin Justice because he had a violent alcoholic father as Justice did. He said to me, "Is he ever going to get a break? Are you ever going to let him be happy?" I got choked up, and I've been thinking for a long time that I would like him to have some happiness and contentment. The problem is that you don't want him to lose his edge either. [Moth and Flame] is going to be a small-town mystery. What you have to do when you write a series is work really hard to come up with something new that's going to freshen it for you as you write it and reengage you in it.

What reengaged you with Blind Eye?

When I came up with my twist on the Catholic priest story [for Blind Eye], I said, "Wow, that's good; that's going to work for me as a writer--more than any other premise that I've ever dealt with." I don't want to ruin it for readers, but once I had that twist on this very topical issue, I felt so compelled to write it that I couldn't wait. Blind Eye is about a guy facing up to what he hates in himself. Even though he's on a mission of justice, he's dealing with all those demons. It's all about redemption.