Biceps of Death — David Stukas

It ain't easy being pretty. And it ain't pretty NOT being pretty in Chelsea. That's what has Robert doing an excruciating set of leg presses under his ripped roommate Michael's preening tutelage--when Michael isn't admiring his new leather workout shorts or going on about how the super-buff trainer, Flex, keeps checking him out. Of course, Michael has the equation down pat: pretty plus rich equals nonstop scoring. So it takes Robert by complete surprise in the locker room when Flex grabs Robert, hands him a CD-ROM and a hot kiss, and takes off running with a promise to retrieve the disc--and Robert--later. And it takes Michael another minute to lift his jaw off the floor.

But Robert doesn't have long to ponder a roll in the hay with Mr. Uber Body. The next morning, Flex is found murdered, pushed from his high-rise Madison Avenue apartment--the latest victim of what the newspapers are calling "the bodybuilder serial killer." Suddenly, Michael and Robert are feeling like the wrong guys in every Hitchcock film ever made. Whoever was after that CD-ROM doesn't mind killing to get it back, and had no trouble tackling a 250-pound trainer to do it. He certainly doesn't mind ransacking Robert's apartment to find it, or making it clear that he won't stop until he finds what he's looking for...and the guys who took it. But when the going gets tough...the tough run and hide at their lesbian friend Monette's apartment for protection. The first question: what's a trainer doing in a chi-chi Madison Avenue apartment? Where does that kind of money really come from?

The only thing to do is check out the CD-ROM. From the first picture, it's clear that somebody's been doing some training that goes way beyond personal and right into kinky. Not only is the CD stocked with incredibly raw and racy images, but they all seem to star prominent men who would do anything to avoid this kind of, er, exposure. Before Robert, Michael and Monette can say, "How limber do you have to be to do that?" the suspects are lining up faster than the ticket buyers for a midnight showing of Mommie Dearest. There's charismatic Republican mayoral candidate, Tom Sheffield; New York's squeaky-clean fashion designer Frank Adams; Chet Ponyweather, a waspy, married, straight man whose old money background won't take kindly to scandal; Texas televangelist Allen Firstborn, and John Bekkman, a mysterious playboy with a sizable trust fund. Now, as they muscle their way into a hidden world of escorts, fetishists, drug dealers, and pampered men leading double lives, the trio dive deeper into a mystery that has more layers than Michael has Frette towels. And when the killer strikes dangerously close to home, New York's most wanted sleuths will have to give it everything they've got before someone can give them a final workout....