艾“安迪”米尔斯,《钟形的主角in the Fog,” Lev AC Rosen’s cracking new mystery, is a private eye who gets two kinds of clients: “Sad men, wondering if their boyfriends are cheating on them, and angry men, convinced their boyfriends are cheating on them.”

It’s 1952, and San Francisco’s “only queer detective,” who first appeared in Rosen’s 2022 novel “Lavender House,” has opened an office on the second floor of a gay bar that’s regularly raided by cops. Under his agreement with the bar owner, Andy is expected to share a portion of his earnings. Lately, alas, he hasn’t landed any clients.

His fortunes take a turn when a mercurial ex-lover reemerges, hiring Andy for an intriguing assignment. During World War II, James Morris and Andy served aboard the Bell, a (fictional) Navy ship. Andy thought they were a long-term item, but a few years ago James quit the relationship without explanation.

Though he’s since climbed the Navy’s leadership ladder, James’ career is in jeopardy. An extortionist has acquired photos of James meeting with a man he pays for sex, and unless James hands over some cash, the crook will send the pictures to Navy bosses.

Andy’s assignment is straightforward — retrieve the photos and film negatives — but his renewed relationship isn’t. Before long, he and James are sleeping together. From now on, James promises, things will be “how they should be. You and me again.” But Andy worries that James will run off again.

轻快的,聪明,有趣,”贝尔佛g” confirms that Rosen has created a sturdy character who can shoulder a compelling series of neo-noir mysteries.

Inspired by hard-boiled crime novels of yore, the action takes place in chic hotels and busy dance halls, where singers in drag perform the day’s hits. The blackmail plot, which features wily twins who call to mind the 1946 Olivia de Havilland movie “The Dark Mirror,” is duly unpredictable. And in Andy, Rosen has crafted a leading man whose troubles never feel contrived.

Upon leaving the Navy, Andy became a San Francisco cop, intending to “throw people off the scent” of his sexuality. But, stalked by guilt because he failed to warn gay clubs about impending police raids, he quit the force. He wants to be a private eye who helps other gay people, and identifying James’ extortionist would fit the bill.

Rosen’s two (so far) Andy Mills books work in part because his crisp sentences establish a sense of place. Andy’s office “smells like liquor and makeup from the hall, seawater and gasoline from the street.” Just as important, Rosen never forgets that he’s writing a period piece, employing 1950s pop culture references and language. For example, a person who today would call themselves a drag artist is, in these pages, a “female impersonator.”

Rosen doesn’t downplay his characters’ sexuality. In this unabashedly gay novel, a drag performer is suspected of extorting cash to pay for better wigs, and when gay characters learn that James, a homosexual man, might be promoted to rear admiral, they chuckle about the double entendre.

The novel has a couple of scenes that don’t work, mainly because the dialogue is awkward. Cuddling with Andy, James laments the nation’s retrograde attitudes about gay people: “In ’48, after the Kinsey report, I thought for sure it would change things. … More than a third of men had had some kind of homosexual sex.” That’s some awfully topical pillow talk.

Mainly, though, Rosen’s characters speak like real people who have complex lives because of daily threats from puritanical hypocrites. When Andy jumps on a streetcar and tries to “outrun the fog,” you know he’s not just talking about the weather.

Kevin Canfield is a freelance writer.