A stunning evocation of gay desire in the moment just before AIDs by the acclaimed author of City of Night: "Taut writing and unapologetic sexual energy" ( The Dallas Morning News).

It is 1981, a hot summer night, and an unscripted ritual is about to take place. Jesse, "the kid," is celebrating one year on the dazzling gay scene and plans to lose himself in its transient pleasures. Clint has fled New York with a sense of unease in the wake of a vicious gay-bashing. Buzz, Boo, Toro, Fredo, and Linda are cruising the city looking for danger, and so is Dave, a "leatherman" devoted to S&M and testing limits. And a priest is searching the streets for a young hustler named Angel, determined to bring him to Jesus.

In this city of night we meet a black cowboy, a bodybuilder obsessed with his sexual prowess, a drag-queen porn director hired to rehearse her stars for a closeted Hollywood mogul, and a middle-aged romantic hiding from a new gay world increasingly obsessed with youth and beauty. As the Santa Ana winds, renowned for stirring up desires and violence, breathe fire down the hills of Los Angeles, this cast of characters circles ever closer to the night-and to a confrontation as astonishing as it is inevitable.

The Coming of the Night is an ode to the golden age of promiscuity and an unflinching exploration of the dark side of desire. "As exciting as it is chilling," it proves once again that John Rechy, the trenchant chronicler of gay life, has no parallel ( Los Angeles Times).