Death is present throughout this intense narrative, but it appears as a theme with particularly dark power in Peck’s gutsy paralleling of the devastating impact of AIDS on the gay community with the horrors of gay serial killers of the era … Peck contrasts his findings about this tragic and frightening time of ignorance, discrimination, fear, suffering, and lack of compassion and support with today’s far more enlightened attitudes toward illness, health care, and LGBT people.