A must-read sequel	It has been 14 years since Billy Sive was shot dead during his five thousand metre race at the Montreal Olympics, as author Patricia Nell Warren continues her narrative as track coach Harlan Brown. We are very quickly refreshed on the story told in The Front Runner and brought up-to-date on events in the life of the college track coach who fell in love with Billy Sive, the distance runner he nurtured for the 1976 games. But in 1990, Brown's life takes on a darker tone as he attempts to find real love again. He is reunited with Vince Matti, one of his former proteges and Billy's best friend. Vince's life is in tatters, the product of drug and alcohol abuse borne of his obsession with turning Billy's assasination into a political battlefield and borderline extremist activism. When Brown takes him under his wing again, they become entangled in more than a roller-coaster relationship. They become the target of a mysterious stalker who is hell-bent to destroy Harlan forever.
A must-read sequel	While The Front Runner was, fundamentally, a love story tracing the short-lived relationship between Harlan and Billy to its shocking and untimely end, Harlan's Race is a mystery that actually begins shortly after Sive's death in Montreal. The backstory tells of a threatening letter received by Billy's father, lawyer John Sive and the lack of attention paid by authorities to a 'second man' theory, which proposed that Billy's killer hadn't acted alone. Now, just as Harlan is beginning to learn how to love again, his life and new-found love are threatened by written threats and terrorizing acts of violence. Through it all, Brown is also set on protecting Betsy Heden and Billy's son, known as Falcon, born to their lesbian friend by artificial insemination after Sive was killed. He is also occupied with a renewed relationship with one of his own sons who has reached out of the past to support his father and rebuild the bonds torn by divorce in the aftermath of a potential scandal in Harlan's pre-Prescott years. With his desires for life, love and family restored, Harlan agrees to run in an annual race in Billy Sive's honor. But Harlan's race is run in fear of the stalker who has been threatening more devestation on his life and the lives of those Harlan loves most. It is this event that brings out the final missing truths surrounding Sive's murder and the startling mystery of who was really behind it.
A must-read sequel	Again, Patricia Nell Warren has brought us people we can identify with and care for. She has created scenarios that ring of real life; relationships that bud, then seem to die and then become rejuvinated; parents and offspring starved for each other's love and respect, re-united; homophobes, misguided by social conditioning, out to destroy those lives. Warren reminds us that, while advances have been made over the past 2 decades, still more needs to be done to bring equallity and fair treatment to gay and lesbian people's lives. She also focuses on the gay inner-self. Dealing with our own feelings and those of the people we love or who touch our lives in some important way. And while the story has a thread of mystery, it's no Agatha Christie, but nor does it try to be. It's just enough to make the story spin and keep you theorizing as to the identity of the antogonist and a good surprise when you finally find out. This book also sets the stage for the finale to the trilogy, due for publication in the fall of 1997. I, for one, look forward to this next 'event' from they keys of Patricia's word processor. I'm sure those of you who have shared the lives of Harlan Brown and his people will also anxiously await the story of Billy's Boy.

Cover art courtesy of Wildcat Press - Used with permission

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