Voice of Force Author:G. Roger Denson Newspaper critic Ragland Hughes is openly gay. Opera tenor Cosimo Fratangelo is famously straight. No one gay or straight says a word as they watch the men's relationship evolve from professional association to loving friendship. So long as both men are alive and profitable. When Fratangelo's body washes ashore off Long Island Sound, convu... more »lsive testimony indicts Hughes as the prosecution's lone suspect. The investigation and media melee that ensue not only cast unwelcome light on the forces keeping a gay man and a straight man from enjoying friendship, they brand Hughes a predator of heterosexual men. Part thwarted love story, part cautionary tale, part philosophical rant, VOICE OF FORCE sounds out the deep divide of sexual difference running through even the most liberal of enclaves. VOICE OF FORCE is a philosophical novel asking a broad adult audience-men and women, gay and straight, religious and secular-whether we can truly reconcile our sexual differences even in this age of liberal consciousness. Although a memoir draws the reader charmingly inside the narrative, the novelist's Godlike prerogative of "seeing all" is gradually abandoned as the reader is made increasingly aware that s/he holds a dossier from the Manhattan District Attorney's archive. As a novel constructed with multiple voices in convergence and conflict, the overarching effect is itself that of an opera played out in narrative form.« less