Like the rest of this cracklingly witty, fast-paced series, Slate is set in an exuberantly pre-AIDS world, when to be young, attractive, and the owner of a successful gay bar was a dandy thing indeed. Clarisse has hauled her dainty posterior off to law school, Valentine has opened Boston's grooviest gay boite, Donna Summer is still on the radio, and there's a dead body at the disco: Life doesn't get a whole lot more fun.

Last in the delightfully funny Valentine-and-Lovelace series, Canary finds our two protagonists a bit the worse for wear. Their bar is losing money, largely because someone keeps insisting on leaving dead bodies around. The cops, this is the 1980s, after all, are not wildly interested in the gay community's little problems, so Lovelace and Valentine set up shop as sleuths, determined to stop the killer before he puts them out of business.