Megan Casey Reviews All the Muscle You Need by Diana McRae

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This, the only novel featuring Eliza Pirex, is surprisingly good. And for a surprising number of reasons. The writing is good, the mystery engaging, and the characters interesting. But that’s just for starters. The best part may be that it is the most realistic description of being a private investigator that I can remember. Eliza, who speaks to us in the first person present, tells us about the criteria for becoming a PI in California, explains how her office is run, and lets us in on not only the primary case, but all her other cases as well. It is, in fact, a book about being a private eye. And at around 130,000 words, it has the length to tell several stories at once and to do it well. Published in 1988, it is a part of the first wave of lesbian mysteries.

On the surface, the book is about one woman’s search for her college chum, who mysteriously disappeared six years before the book begins. But someone, it seems, doesn’t want Eliza to find her. Eliza’s other cases are just as interesting: moonlighting with a cleaning service at a local college to find the person who has been molesting women students, and investigating the acquaintances of another client, all of whom seem to take advantage of the gullible woman.

Eliza’s love life, too, is interesting and fairly unique. She lives with a woman named Honor Sutton, who is a commercial designer, and Honor’s two children, ages 7 and 12 from her previous marriage. Honor is cut from nifty cloth, not from the cardboard that seems to be the makeup of many of the love interests we read about. Her relationship with her odd family and her general daffiness give life to the book and even give reason not to dislike the odd book title, which is a phrase from Honor’s promo campaign for Eliza’s business.

Eliza is one of the only lesbian detectives I have read about to live with kids (Cherry Hartman’s Morgan McRain and Tonya Muir’s Lacey Montgomery are two others). Claire McNab’s Carol Ashton has a young son who visits her, but who lives with his dad. Eliza seems like a real mother to her adopted ones. Her feelings for them are sensitive and believable (while Ashton’s are often unrealistically gushy or mechanical rather than spontaneous) and her kids make up an important part of the interest of the book (while, again, Ashton’s son just seems to be there taking up space.)
Eliza, however, can’t seem to keep her hands off an old girlfriend, and when Honor finds out, there is hell to pay. As Eliza tells us,

“Women tend to be more monogamous than men. So in a relationship between two women, the odds that it is monogamous are good. I don’t know why I stray against the odds every so once in a while. Probably because I’m a detective and we detectives have a yen for romance and adventure . . . ”

Like most books, All the Muscle You Need has a few problems; one or two of the plot devices seem a little too hard to believe and Eliza Pirex is probably the worst-named character in lesbian fiction. On the whole, though, it works. A goodly number of stars for a early lesbian mystery that few people—even aficionados—have ever heard of.

For other reviews by Megan Casey, see her website at https://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews The End of April by Penny Sumner

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Tor Cross is a special kind of private Investigator: one who is trained to authenticate and preserve documents. Her great aunt—an Oxford professor—hires Tor for both of her skills. Not only does and want Tor to validate the authenticity of handwritten Victorian-era erotica, but also to investigate a series of threatening messages received by a law student at Oxford—a beautiful law student, named April Tate. But April dismisses the threats and Tor has to go into overdrive to make sure that April’s complacence doesn’t get her killed. And that means finding whoever is sending the notes.

The setting conjures up Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night. In fact, one of the characters even mentions that iconic title. But it also brings to mind other books in this side-genre of lesbian mysteries: murders in the halls of academia. A few come to mind: Report for Murder by Val McDermid, Angel Food and Devil Dogs by Liz Bradbury, Hallowed Murder by Ellen Hart, and even Agenda for Murder by Joan Albarella. I happen to like this motif; the educational settings seem to give the books a grounding in the literary.

The End of April is constructed differently than many other lesbian mysteries in that Tor gets the girl right away—without having to wait until near the end of the story when the mystery has been wrapped up and the love interest is no longer a suspect. And unlike the relationships in some books—in Stoner McTavish, for instance—the attraction between the two women is easy to understand. Both Tor and April are intelligent, outgoing, and immersed in their own special talents. It is a rather spare, easy-to-read novel and because Tor is likable, her first-person narration makes the novel smooth and enjoyable. The writing is always adequate, but in places—like when Tor thinks she has lost April for good and waxes poetic about love—it is both exquisite and wise.

One problem, though, is that it is a chore to remember the actual perpetrator even a day or two after finishing the book. This seems to indicate that the criminal was not really a major character. That’s all right; I don’t believe that the criminal even has to be part of the story at all. What I argue with is that, if the criminal is present, he or she should be memorable. Another small peeve is that Tor’s job transcribing Victorian-era porn gets a way-too-brief mention. Neither the job nor the author of the manuscript she is transcribing is adequately described. It is not impossible that Sarah Waters, in her dazzling Fingersmith, took it upon herself to finish what Sumner started. Kudos to Waters but not to Sumner.

This 1992 novel is part of the second wave of Naiad Press mysteries. As such it has historical significance in the LGBT publishing world. It was even edited by two of Naiad’s shining lights—Katherine V. Forrest and Clare McNab, who wrote the popular Kate Delafield and Carol Ashton series of mysteries respectively. The End of April is a better-than-average mystery with better-than-average characters. Give it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars and add it to the burgeoning list of mysteries set in academic surroundings.