{"id":2076,"date":"2022-03-31T16:49:51","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T16:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2076"},"modified":"2023-04-02T23:02:12","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T23:02:12","slug":"knock-off-the-hat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2076","title":{"rendered":"Knock Off the Hat"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s summer in post-World-War-II Philadelphia. The temperature is rising, and so too is the gay bashing, thanks to the police department and the City\u2019s hugely corrupt judicial system. Tough-talking, but also hugely funny, Clifford Waterman\u2014a former police detective who received a dishonorable discharge from the Army for being caught in the act in Cairo\u2014is trying to make a go as a noirish PI. He\u2019s hired to get the charges against a young man caught up in a bar raid dismissed and his $500 bribe reduced. Shake-downs of lesbians and gay men are nothing new, but Waterman begins to realize that the scope of the attacks and the size of the bribes are escalating hugely\u2014along with the psychological damage and suicides that the publicity is causing among the LGBTQ community. Waterman\u2019s search is a broad one, taking him throughout the greater Philadelphia area and up and down the social ladder. Sex and lovers, the relationships between Black and white queer men\u2014expect the racist language of the day\u2014and jazz and the blues all contribute to creating a memorable time and place. It\u2019s great to have the author of the ground-breaking Don Strachey novels back with what we can only hope will be as prolific a series.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s summer in post-World-War-II Philadelphia. The temperature is rising, and so too is the gay bashing, thanks to the police department and the City\u2019s hugely corrupt judicial system. Tough-talking, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[92,54,69,55,58,164],"class_list":["post-2076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-gay","tag-historical","tag-lgbtq","tag-mystery-detective","tag-private-investigators","tag-star"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Knock-Off-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Knock-Off-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Brian Kenney","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}