Tag Archives: lesbian mystery

Megan Casey reviews The Girl in Gold by Beth Lyons

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I recently received a couple of review copies of books in which the private investigator protagonist has paranormal powers. The first, Geonn Canon’s Underdogs, has its shape-shifting PI use her powers to do surveillance for a client in the first few pages. Perhaps I should have read on, but using paranormal powers to solve a case—or any part of a case—is verboten as far as lesbian mysteries go. The mystery genre should be a cerebral one—one in which, ideally, the reader can empathize with the detective, weighing clues and solving the mystery concurrently with the detective. Because readers are not canidae, it is difficult to empathize in Canon’s book. In other words, a dog can watch a house without arousing suspicion; a human cannot. So for me, the book became primarily paranormal.

So it was with some foreboding that I began The Girl in Gold, in which 23-year-old part-time P.I. Vox Swift is an elf.

Vox seems to be one of two employees of Boleian Investigations, the other being Boleian himself. She also works as a messenger for a family business called Swift Messengers, which was fortunate, because during one of her deliveries, she becomes aware of a murder. Seems that the victim—dressed loudly in gold—has just been discovered in the library of a famous author. Then, the same day, another girl about the same age and size—her face unrecognizable—is also discovered.

Vox is studying to be the type of magician called a Bard, which is one who sings songs as she investigates, asking the universe as it were, to help in her discoveries. The first time she uses this magic, she is simply trying to ascertain if magic was used in the murder. To me, this was okay—the magics were canceling each other out because, in fact, there was no magic used in the crime. But when Vox questions a maid in the house where the murder was discovered, she uses a charm that causes the girl to spill everything she knows. This was a no-no. It’s not something a human detective could do. So the book can not be truly considered a lesbian mystery. Rather, it is a lesbian fantasy. But I had already read five chapters so I went on. Later, she casts a spell to find a secret door where she can eavesdrop on an important conversation. Shake my head.

The idea of a town that had humans, fae, elves, and dwarves living in relative harmony was a good and interesting one. Vox herself has promise, and her budding relationship with the human paladin Jesskah Morningstar was tantalizing.

Still, in rating the book just for myself and for whoever reads this, just about everything about it gets a 3: the mystery (which everyone solves before Vox dose), the writing style, the relationships, the emotions, and even the universe are all above average, but just barely. It isn’t something I can’t recommend, but neither am I going to warn you away any more than I have. Those readers who specialize in reading lesbian mysteries are going to like it less than those who prefer fantasy.

Note: I read a review copy of this book kindly provided in ebook form by the publisher through Lesbrary.

Another Note: See my full reviews of over 250 other Lesbian Mystery novels at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews The Ultimate Exit Strategy by Nikki Baker

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Hmm. This book was published by Bella Books in 2001, which would have made it one of their first publications. This means that for some reason Baker bailed on Naiad, who had published the first three books in this series. Naiad was subsumed by Bella two years later. The copy I read for this review was probably the only printing.

The fourth and last Virginia Kelly mystery takes place in the world of finance. The company Virginia has been working for since college, Whlytebread, Greese, Winslow, and Stoat, is about to be subsumed by a larger firm, Gold Rush Investments. This will make most of the Whytebread employees, including junior partner Virginia, fairly rich when they trade in their old company shares. There’s just one problem: Whytebread’s CEO, Wes Winslow, is murdered just a few days before the merger is scheduled to take place. If the murderer is not found, the deal will not go through. So Virginia sees it as her duty to solve the crime.

Like Baker’s other books, this one is too good to miss. Her flashbacks—often within other flashbacks—are not your basic narrative, but she manages to do it flawlessly—the reader always knows exactly where the story is going. Virginia is her old ironic self and her BFF Naomi Wolf is back to keep Virginia on her toes. To complicate the investigation, Virginia gets taken up with Detective Cassandra Hope, an old flame she would heartily like to rekindle. Then there is her faltering, long-distance relationship with Spike, who we met in Long Goodbyes. Virginia suspects that Spike is using her for her expectations and that Cassandra is using her to solve the case.

The British novelist C. P. Snow was a master at conducting dialogue without using actual quotations. Passages like: James was astonished when I told him that I knew his sister from my days at Cambridge. He told me that he had no idea that I had attended school there. Other novelists have done this as well, especially those that were not very good at rendering dialogue. But Baker goes Snow one better, blending active and passive conversation. Here’s an example in a conversation between Virginia and Naomi:

“I called Spike tonight and I broke up.”  I’d thought it was the best timing, considering Cassandra and all.

“Ok right.” Naomi picked up the mention of Cassandra as if it were a detail she’d forgotten. 

An article should be written on the best buds of lesbian sleuths. Certainly Naomi is at the top of the list, followed by Nyla Wade’s Audrey Louise and Jane Lawless’ Cordelia. Oddly, many of our protagonists’ BFFs are actually gay men (see Barbara Johnson, David Galloway, et al). Whenever Naomi is present, there is a spark—not only in Virginia, but in the story. Yet the reader senses that a romance between the two would be a mistake. In this novel, Naomi is trying to give up smoking, which makes her even bitchier than usual. And, as always, she figures out things just a little before Virginia does.

I have seen a review of this book that complains that Virginia is not black enough for the reviewer’s comfort. It reminds me of another review I read about a lesbian sleuth that was not lesbian enough. Virginia is a product of her time and her culture. She did not grow up in a ghetto, her parents were not divorced, and she completed a good college education. In fact, this is a brilliant portrait of a black woman who is trying to make it in the predominantly white profession of personal finance. The book does not dwell on Whitey vs. Blackie. It dwells on a sensitive and very intelligent young woman trying to survive in a world she has chosen. Bravo.

The Ultimate Exit Strategy is as good as the first three novels in the series, or at least it would have been if not for the sloppy job Bella Books did on both the editing and the proofreading. But the author has to shoulder some of her blame herself for not going over the final galleys more carefully (presuming that Bella provided any). The specter of HIV is thrust into the plot at the last minute and not only was it not foreshadowed, but it seems to come to nothing. Somebody missed something, or a couple of somethings. Like the half-dozen discretionary hyphens that pop up in the text. And the more-than-usual typos. In short, Baker made a mistake changing publishers. Maybe she thought that Naiad’s current editor would not be as good as Bella’s. She was probably wrong. Maybe the relative failure of this title made Baker rethink her aspirations as a writer. After all, she has published nothing else in over 15 years. Yet The Ultimate Exit Strategy does not end like the last book in a series. Like the author, Virginia ends up leaving her Chicago firm. Many adventures seem to lurk in the future.

Will there ever be another Virginia Kelly mystery? Who knows. But regardless, Nikki Baker is wildly underrated and underappreciated. Her books need to come out in new editions, including e-book editions. Give this book—and this series—a near-perfect rating, despite the editorial glitches.

For over 250 Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website at http://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews Long Goodbyes by Nikki Baker

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This is the third novel in Nikki Baker’s Virginia Kelly series. It is an odd novel. For one thing, unlike her other novels, it isn’t a mystery. Nor is it a thriller or a romance or any of the other typical genres. Although Virginia Kelly is the protagonist and the story is told in her inimitable voice, the location and the cast of characters has changed. Yet, except for a slightly sloppy ending, Long Goodbyes could be ranked high on a list of literary novels

Virginia Kelly, has traveled from Chicago to her home town of Blue River to attend her 10-year high school reunion. Because her relationship with her girlfriend Emily in Chicago seems to be over, Ginny becomes fixated on Rosie Paschen, her first love and her first lesbian dalliance, who has contacted her after a decade of silence to beg her to attend the reunion. But Blue River is not the same as it was when Ginny was a girl, nor are her friends. “I imagined many pasts in my home town, as many as there are individuals, as many as there are points of view. If they took up space, in the air overBlue River there would have been a huge traffic jam of individual perspectives returning, making it hard to avoid unfortunate accidents of colliding perception.

Ginny is looking forward to her meeting with Rosie  in order to complete an unfinished transaction, to show courage where she once felt fear. But when the two finally connect, Rosie is distant and standoffish. Ginny’s r near-obsession causes her to initiate sex with a reluctant Rosie anyway. And then Rosie completely disappears. The book is Ginny’s attempt to find her and make the kind of connection that she has been fantasizing about for years. Something that she hopes will validate her life and everything she has done up until this time.

Although Baker introduces Ginny’s parents and high school BFF Sandra, I missed the laconic Naomi Wolf, Ginny’s bud from Chicago. Without her, this novel is darker and more brooding, more desperate and haunting than the first two novels in the series. And I think this is the point. Ginny’s search is our search; the same search animals might make when looking over the fence or across the road or wondering what is on the other side of the mountain.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Baker conceived this novel as a stand-alone, with someone other than Virginia Kelly as the protagonist. But it works as it is and I was glad to connect with Virginia in a different setting. It must have been a difficult book to write—and to edit: Katherine V. Forrest missed a couple of convoluted paragraphs and seemed to be unable to get Baker to cut out unneeded scenes or characters—such as her gay friend Emery from high school. He was an interesting character and I would have liked to see him in another novel, but in this one he was extraneous. At 235 pages, Long Goodbyes is more than 60 pages longer than In the Game, which is a gem.

Despite its shortcomings, Long Goodbyes is a good addition to the Virginia Kelly series, and to lesbian fiction in general. It shows us another side of Ginny—one that most authors would hesitate to write. Anyone who is turned off by anything in the first two novels will certainly be turned off by this one. But for those of us who like Baker and Ginny, Long Goodbyes is simply another pleasure.

For over 250 Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website at http://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews A Quiet Death by Cari Hunter 

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One of the reasons I read books is that I don’t like to watch TV. So it’s not necessarily a compliment when I say that A Quiet Death could easily be made into an episode of Broadchurch: death among dark and brooding scenery. But because of the shared point of view of the two main protagonists, it’s like watching a mixture of Broadchurch and Grey’s Anatomy.

Don’t get me wrong, this book has the same grittiness and excitement as the first—somehow I missed the second—maybe too much the same. In this book—as in No Good Reason—an abused girl or woman escapes from captivity only be found either badly injured or dead on the rugged slopes of the Dark Peak area of North England. As in the first book, the story starts out a bit slowly but revs up after a few chapters.

The rotating chapters between Sanne Jensen, a police detective, and her girlfriend Meg Fielding, a doctor specializing in emergency room medicine, are not only interesting in themselves but often act as brief respites between some of the horrors that are almost continually revealed. The fact that they end up intertwining is also a big plus. It took a lot of thought and good writing to accomplish that.

Sanne and Meg, lifelong friends who dated occasionally, have finally decided that they want to be a real couple, although they still prefer to have separate residences. They are kind of a model couple, but for some reason scenes from their domestic life are a lot less interesting than their chapters apart (kind of like when Mary Beth Lacey goes home to her husband at the end of her shift). In fact, the first chapter was so bland I found myself wondering how I could have liked the first book so much. Yes, it gave the reader information on the two main characters, but it was information that could have been worked in elsewhere.

But it got better quickly and Hunter’s agenda—this time it is sex trafficking and sex slavery—is not only horrifying, but important. Bravo for bringing this subject to everyone’s attention. Repeating another theme from the first book, the local scenery plays an important part of the book, as does Sanne’s familiarity with it. And one last similarity to the first book: one of the characters gets trapped alone with bad guys, but it happens by accident, not stupidity, like you see in so many other similar books. Formulaic? Well, yes. Kind of like those TV shows I mentioned earlier. But here’s another kudo, the author has cut down her use of the word “grin” from 31 times in the first book to only 10 in this one. It would be interesting to know how many times she uses it in the second book. Anyone?

It’s hard to think of giving this book less than 4 stars, so I won’t. But I did have reservations about a couple of things. First, a third character—Sanner’s supervisor—gets several of her own point of view sections. For me, this is an artistic hiccup that means the author has taken the easy way round. I don’t believe that Penny Mickelbury or Gina L. Dartt—who also have dual protagonists—would introduce a third point of view just because some scenes might take place without either of the main characters being present. And the several confusions about how to pronounce Sanne’s name gets old very quickly.

The writing is better than average, but not exceptional. The good lines—“I have a meeting at stupid o’clock” —are matched by poor or overwritten ones—“She took a moment to curse every deity known to man, plus a few more she’d made up.”

In any case, this one is recommended for all readers, but especially for those who are trying to wean themselves from too much TV. CSI Derbyshire, anyone?

Note1:  This book was just named the winner of the 2017 Rainbow Award.

Note 2: I  read a review copy of this novel, which was provided to me by the publisher through NetGalley.

Note 3: See my full reviews of over 250 other Lesbian Mystery novels at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews Only Lawyers Dancing by Jan McKemmish

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I’ve had to create a new shelf for this one called Lesbian Crime Fiction. There is a lot of crime in this book, and a couple of lesbians, but nobody actually solves a mystery or a puzzle. At least, I don’t think they do. The fact is that Only Lawyers Dancing is so literary that it’s often difficult to follow the thread of the several stories that are going on simultaneously. The author uses first person present point of view not only for Frances Smith, the lesbian protagonist, but also for her co-protagonist, Anne Stevens, a straight woman. And for Anne’s boyfriend Harry, who may or may not be a mobster. But she also goes into third person at times, but told as if one of the other characters is relating it. And stream of consciousness abounds.

Anne and Frances are very old friends from two very different backgrounds. Anne’s father was a policeman while Frances’ was a crime boss. One of he recurring narratives in this book is a crime that took place over two decades earlier—one that eventually led to Anne’s father having a nervous breakdown. But despite the fact that these murders are referred to again and again, they seem to have no relation to the rest of the book, which is mostly concerned with a well-known hit man named Max hiring Anne to make him look good in court. The rest of the book deals with various criminals connected to Max and their relationships to both Anne and Frances.

But McKemmish did not write Only Lawyers Dancing for the plot or the story. She did it because she loved writing and the opportunities it often offers to bend genres. She wrote it because she loved words and the many possibilities they give to communicate ideas in different ways. Think of a hybrid between the prefaces to the chapters in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic movie Blow-Up, and Clare Sudbury’s odd crime novel The Dying of Delight. But don’t really expect things to make sense. The author knows exactly what she is doing and isn’t shy about letting us know it. “The trouble is you keep expecting it to make sense, like a serial moving tortuously slow through the labyrinth of side plots and byways toward an order, a clarity, a closed book.”

In some places the writing is pretentious, in others it is engaging and downright brilliant. Like, “ . . .the new week looms like a mountain in the mist when you’re on a cheap-fare-to-Europe aeorplane and hoping, hoping hoping that the radar works.” But there is murder, embezzlement, theft, and even a kidnapping on the way to denouement. It’s not certain what satisfaction the characters get from all this, but we can only hope they all live happily ever after. I give it 4 stars.

For over 250 other Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website at http://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews Addict by Matt Doyle

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Popular lesbian author Lori L. Lake has an interesting essay on pseudonyms and the reasons writers choose to use them. Oddly, she fails to discuss the use of pen names in lesbian mysteries. The omission is even more unusual because “Lori L. Lake” is, in fact, itself the pseudonym of a writer of lesbian mysteries. I don’t know her reason for using a pseudonym, but a number of other lesbian writers are simply afraid to be outed as lesbians, either at work or with their families. Nikki Baker is one of these, as is current superstar Lee Winter.

Then there are other writers—like Lake—who use pseudonyms for reasons unknown: Kate Allen, Radclyffe, Jae, Rose Beecham, Ellen Hart, and on and on. I’m sure that most of these women have good reasons for using false names to write under. But think of how different the reasons must be for a man.

As far as I know, Matt Doyle, who wrote Addict, is the author’s real name. But if that is true, it puts him in a very small category. My research shows that only a few male writers of lesbian mysteries use their real names—not including initials: Charles Atkins (a prolific author with many other books), David Galloway (a supposed literary writer), Mark McNease (whose lesbian sleuth is a spinoff from his popular gay detective series), Samuel L. Steward (whose two books about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are as much literary reminiscences as they are mysteries), and Jason Halstead (another prolific author with many titles).

J.T. Langdon and R.E. Conary are also men, but as far as I know, they use their real initials and their real last names. N.H. Avenue also uses initials, but his last name is also not his real one. A pertinent question is this: how many male writers of lesbian mysteries use female pseudonyms, and why? The answer to the first is ‘I don’t know,” and I may never know. But the answer to the second is obvious. Anyone who has read more than a handful of reviews knows 1. that most readers of lesbian mysteries are not only women, but also lesbians and 2. that many—not all and maybe not even most—lesbians want to read books by lesbians about lesbians. Period. They would pass up a lesbian mystery written by a man without even reading the blurb. Truth, folks.

I happen to believe that a good writer can write about either sex. Henry James wrote Daisy Miller, The Princess Cassamassima, and What Maisie Knew.Thomas Hardy wrote Tess of the Durbervilles, George Eliot wrote Silas Marner. I’m sure I don’t have to go any further because the list is endless. There is no reason why a man can’t write good lesbian fiction, but if they want to be rated based on the fiction rather than their gender, it’s probably pays to write under a female pseudonym.

Okay, let’s get to the review. Would my opinion of Addict be different if it were written by someone named Martha Doyle? Probably not, but the faults of the book are more with the story than with the characters. Like Jason Halstead’s Kat Wimple series, Addict is set in the future. Unlike Halstead’s books though, Addict doesn’t really feel like its set in the future. For one thing, his protagonist, Cassie Tam, doesn’t really like modern conveniences; she likes real blinds, for instance and normal furniture. You’ll find very little Blade Runner futureism here. The few futuristic things he mentions, like tech shifting and online addiction, are light on description. Cassie’s “protector,” a robot gargoyle named Bert, night must as well be a man or, as I have seen elsewhere, “a man substitute” whose job is to rescue Cassie. Even the modern city of New Hopeland—which I assume is meant to be something like the new city Elon Musk has envisioned creating—is given short shrift in its description. If something takes place in the future, we are going to need a lot more creation and a lot more description.

The mystery is quite a good one in theory, but on paper it seems overly—and unsatisfactorily—explicated. In other words, it’s hard to figure out what’s actually going on, even if we are told over and over. It’s the old showing instead of telling bugaboo. The author’s explanation of the mystery takes longer to tell than the denouement, and even that is dependent on our old friend, the seemingly normal person who is actually a criminally insane religious fanatic. In addition, the reasoning and execution of the crime is so convoluted that all you can do it blink and turn the page.

And I guess Cassie is a lesbian; she says she is and at the very end of the book she may even think about asking someone out. But again, she is a permutation of another of our old friends, a lesbian on the run from a bad relationship and terrified of being hurt a second time—although in this case, her old relationship is described as a good one and as far as I can tell without rereading, she wasn’t dumped by her ex. Oh well. In any case, the author is content with Cassie not having a real relationship. It is easier that way. Yet again, for lesbian readers this choice is far from satisfactory.

So regardless of the gender of the author, Addict is not something I can recommend. At less than 56,000 words, it is about 20,000 words too short. And those words could have been used to very good advantage to spruce up—and possibly eliminate—the problems.

Note: I received a review copy of this book that was kindly provided by the author in e-book form through Lesbrary.

For over 250 other Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website athttp://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews Edited Out by Lisa Haddock

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Edited Out by Lisa Haddock cover

It would be easy to just say that this is a really good book and that you should put it high on your list of things to read. but I guess that would be shirking my responsibilities as a reviewer. But if you’ve read any of my other reviews you’d know that several things catch my imagination when I read, three of which are the writing, the plot, and the characters. Edited Out is written in the point of view most favored by lesbian mystery authors, first person past—“I did this, I went there” etc. It’s a good point of view because it brings the character closer to the reader than standard third person limited or omniscient. But it is also an easy POV to make mistakes in because it most easily reveals a character’s personality. And if you don’t like the personality of the main character, chances are you won’t like the book.

I like Carmen Ramirez. She is the daughter of a Puerto Rican dad and a mom of Irish descent. After her mother’s death when she was still a baby, Carmen was sent by her dad to live with her racist, homophobic, and bible-quoting grandmother in Frontier City, Oklahoma—a very thinly disguised Tulsa, complete with a famous evangelist and religious university. Somehow, Carmen has come through her girlhood strong enough to embrace her sexuality and to land a job as copyeditor for the local newspaper. But when she is assigned to work on a story about the murder of a young girl by a lesbian schoolteacher, she must make the hardest decision of her career.

When I first read the description of this book, I was hesitant to open the pages; it was bound to be filled with depressing scenes of homophobia and confrontation. But Haddock manages to turn the story in a completely different direction. Even when Carmen interviews a number of unsavory characters, she does it with such style that even if her questions are not answered, I felt I had nevertheless learned something important.

Like many lesbian detectives in the genre, Carmen is running from a bad relationship (see Claire McNab’s Kylie Kendall, Elaine Beale’s Lou Spencer, ad infinitum). She has been very shy of getting into another until she meets college student Julia Nichols (who reminds me very much of a young Aimee Grant in Katherine V. Forrest’s novels), who identifies as straight. Their developing romance—as well as Carmen’s love/hate relationship with her grandmother—give balance to the book and intersect with the plot in important ways. All the elements combine for an exciting—and hopeful—finish. It’s hard not to credit editor Katherine V. Forrest for the smoothness of this book, especially after having just read several Naiad books edited by others.

There is a lot of religious stuff here but again, Haddock uses the subject as a literary device without actually proselytizing or bashing. Remember that the book is set in Bible-Belt Oklahoma, where churchgoing is as natural as breathing. Does it get a little over the top sometimes? Well, maybe, but there are some enjoyable parts, too, like when Julia argues scripture with her fundamentalist cousin in order to rescue a confused young woman from a room filled with Prayer Warriors. And maybe there are a few too many coincidences in the solution, but hey, doesn’t every mystery have these?

And here’s a question for someone to write an article about: why do so many lesbian mystery protagonists have a gay man as their best friend (not counting their lovers of course)? Carmen has one. So does Bill in Joan Opyr’s books, Lamaar in David Galloway’s Lamaar Ransom, Private Eye, Barbara Johnson’s Colleen Fitzgerald, etc, etc. Is this true in real life? Very few, like Nikki Baker’s Virginia Kelly and Vicki P. McConnell’s Nyla Wade, seem to have same-sex best friends.

Ultimately, Edited Out is a really good book and you should put it high on your list of things to read. In the same league with She Scoops to Conquer, give this one a 4+.

For more than 250 other Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website at http://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews The Slayer by Nadine LaPierre

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Whoa. Here’s something I wasn’t expecting. I purchased The Slayer primarily so I could get free shipping for a recent book order. At the time I ordered it, I was not even sure that it was a mystery. The book, when it arrived, was an attractive size and it was well formatted—more accessible for my taste than the often-unwieldy RegalCrest/Quest books. Because it was almost certainly printed by CreateSpace, I assumed it to be self-published (under the aegis of Frisson Books. So far so good.

The prologue—although just as unnecessary as most prologues, was written better and held my interest better than most. Then we meet RCMP Constable Danielle (not Dannie, please) Renaud, who has left her birthplace near Quebec to take a job in Halifax, Nova Scotia. At first blush, she is simply Claire McNab’s Carol Ashton transplanted from Australia to Canada—an incredibly beautiful, statuesque out blonde with a hard-to-match work ethic. But I think Danielle is a more rounded, more-professionally written character than Carol. And she has a good backstory. She has a habit of speaking her ideas into a tape recorder: a convincing and fairly unique motif. So, still good.

In fact, once you get through the first dozen chapters and figure out who the characters are, The Slayer is a pretty remarkable book. On loan from her department to the Special Crimes Unit, Danielle is assigned to look into a cold case—the death of a nurse a year and a half before. Danielle digs into this seemingly impossible-to-solve case and manages to dig up a few new facts no one else had been able to find, while trying to juggle a personal life that includes no less than five women dancing around each other like mating birds. Misdirections abound—but they are misdirections well conceived.

The reader (along with Danielle) learns a lot about forensics and psychology without the author making us think of homework. Danielle’s knowledge of different types of data searches gets a bit forced, but everything else—including a knowledge of veterinary supplies and types of drugs—are spot-on believable. And hey, LaPierre knows her way around the bedroom, too; you can look forward to a couple of delicious sex scenes that are almost worth the price of the book (plus shipping).

The author takes a lot of chances and almost always gets away with what she attempts. The plot often careens like a tilt-a-whirl, but rather than thinking that there might be a method to the madness, I suspect that there is genius in that madness instead. The Slayer is simply one of the most well-plotted books I have ever read. Add this to a plethora of interesting characters and a total lack of typos, and you have the makings of a must-read.

But the book is not all gold and emeralds. It is difficult at times to figure out who is romancing who, a couple of these relationships are not properly brought to a close, there are a few clumsy point of view shifts, needless dream sequences are thrown in here and there, and don’t even get me started on the last paragraph!

All in all, though, it is an exciting and well-written mystery. I recommend this book pretty highly and wish the author would tweak it just a bit. And here’s a clue. Books published at CreateSpace are free to revise and the author doesn’t have to even buy any copies herself. Ditto for e-books. Second edition, anyone? As it is now, I’ll call it 3.7.

For over 250 other Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website at http://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/ or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews Fearful Symmetry by Tasha Fairbanks

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For me, good books are the hardest to review. I mean, it’s easy—and sometimes not even fair—to find flaws in the work of writers who really don’t understand writing, but what do I say about a writer who does? Sure, Tasha Fairbanks’ characters are good, her prose is compelling, her plot is exciting and unusual—but these are things that we expect from a good novel.

One thing I can do is to say what other books this one reminds me of. The scene and part of the fin de siecle tone is somewhat similar to Clare Sudbery’s sometimes-brilliant The Dying of Delight, right down to the literary title. What the book reminds me most of, though, is J.K. Rowling. No, not the Harry Potter books, but the others. The setting and multiple point-of-view shifts are reminiscent of Rowling’s A Casual Vacancy and the detective reminds me of Rowling’s Cormoran Strike, with his flawed character and his super assistant.

In fact, Sam Carter, trying to get over a failed relationship, is pretty down and out. She has an office and a drinking habit and that’s pretty much it. Her job as a private detective has been reduced to serving writs. But when an old acquaintance calls and asks her to investigate the murder of her foster daughter, Sam knows that she must clean herself up before she can clean up the case.

And what a case it is. It involves a runaway girl, a murder, a fertility clinic, a genetic lab, S&M, and a righteous, bigoted, right-wing church. But it is really the characters that move the story. Sam is steady, well-spoken, professional, and believable. Her bouncy sidekick—young reporter Sarah Ginsberg—has issues out the yin-yang: mother issues, boyfriend issues, career issues, even sexuality issues. But Fairbanks handles all her characters masterfully.

Lotsa characters and lotsa third-person points of view. In fact, one criticism I have of the book is that there are too many points of view. Some characters appear seemingly out of thin air and disappear just as quickly. It is distracting when you have to pause in your reading and wonder, “Now who is this character? Have I seen her before?” before realizing that it is a new character altogether.

Another flaw is that some of the important characters disappear without even a by-your-leave. Just because they don’t figure in the denouement doesn’t mean that we don’t want to know what happens to them. Finally, Sam’s love (if you can call it that) interest isn’t all that special. In fact, the sexual tension between her and two of the other characters is quite palpable while it is nonexistent in the woman she fancies.

So give this one as close to a four as you want to without going over. Less if you are as disappointed as I am that Fairbanks or her editors didn’t see Sam Carter and Sarah Ginsberg as worthy of a fine series instead of simply a one-off.

For more than 250 other Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website at http://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries

Megan Casey reviews The Shirley Combs/Dr. Mary Watson Series by Sandra de Helen

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The Hounding  (Shirley Combs/Dr. Mary Watson Series Book 1)

Pastiche: “a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work.” For decades, the word pastiche was commonly used to refer to stories about Sherlock Holmes that were not written by A. Conan Doyle. Perhaps the most famous is The Seven-Percent Solution, which was a best seller for Nicholas Meyer in 1974. More recently, Laurie R. King (who also writes lesbian mysteries featuring Kate Martinelli) has created the Mary Russell Mystery Series, which features the iconic sleuth. Holmes also appears in Carole Nelson Douglas’ Irene Adler series. In fact, Amazon.com lists over 7000 paperbacks inspired by Holmes.

As far as the lesbian mystery genre goes, characters based on Holmes and Watson appear in Nene Adams’ Gaslight Series, Olivia Stowe’s Charlotte Diamond Series, Debra Hyde’s Charlotte Olmes Series. There is more than a subtle similarity to Holmes and Watson in Iza Moreau’s The XYZ Mysteries, with Xande Calhoun as Holmes and her sister Yolande as Watson. There are stories about Holmes and Watson as lesbians and Holmes and Watson as gay. Now, Sandra de Helen has become one of the latest pasticheurs with her series about Shirley Combs and her friend Dr. Mary Watson. In the first novel, The Hounding, neither character is either gay or lesbian, or even hetero. But we’ll get to that in a paragraph or two.

We don’t hear the word pastiche much any more. Today, it’s called “fan fiction.” I suspect that The Hounding began as fan fiction, and perhaps that’s why it isn’t as strong as it could be. For one thing, the author makes over 15 references to Sherlock Holmes himself. A couple of the characters joke about the Sherlock Holmes/Shirley Combs vocal similarity. And the language sometimes is just too Holmesian (despite the story being set in modern-day Oregon) to be anything but fan fiction. Here are a couple of for instances:

“I have been engaged by Miss Goldenhawk Vandeleur to enquire into the circumstances surrounding the death of her mother, Pricilla Leoin.”

“Only a slight upward movement of Shirley’s left eyebrow would have given away her surprise, and only an observer as keen as Shirley herself would have seen it.”

Now there’s nothing wrong with fan fiction, which may be the newest literary genre. In The Hounding, the writing is strong and the mystery is worthy of the master himself. In short, a woman is mauled by dogs, causing her to have a heart attack and die. But who set the dogs on her and where are they now? Shirley Combs, private investigator and portfolio analyst, takes on the job of finding the answer. But unless an author is actually writing about the real Holmes and Watson, it is not a good idea to stick too close to the original.

There is little backstory about either Shirley or Mary. Both consider themselves asexual and both live alone: Shirley in Portland, Oregon and Mary in nearby Lake Oswego. And neither, unfortunately, seems to have a very interesting personality. Of the two, though, it is Mary—the primary narrator—who has the most promise. It is she who gets an odd feeling when she sees an attractive woman and it is she who continually questions her strange relationship with Shirley. Shirley seems to question nothing.

And I can’t let this review go without discussing point of view. As you will remember, most—but not all—of the original Sherlock Holmes stories are narrated in their entirety by Watson, who sees all and hears all. Holmes includes him in his adventures just so that Watson is in attendance, not only as a friend, but as an observer. De Helen knows this well, but often finds it difficult to insert her Watson into the action, although this action is important to the story. Here’s how Mary Watson explains her ability to do it. Evidently, like Archie Goodwin in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe detective series, Shirley has a photographic memory and is able to give a thorough account of her outings, as when Mary says, “she dictated her word by word account for me.” Then Mary continues, “I use my creative license to add what I imagine to be the thoughts and emotions of all the players.” She adds later, “It’s easy to imagine what happened next.” This is one of the cleverest point-of-view ploys I’ve ever seen, but it’s still a glitch in the artistry.

But that’s enough skating around. As fan fiction, The Hounding is as good as most–as creative literature, not so much. But despite everything, it is an interesting and well-developed mystery. I recommend it for any Holmes/Watson obsessives.

The Illustrious Client (Shirley Combs/Dr. Mary Watson Series Book 2)

One of the many good things about this, the second novel in the Shirley Combs/Dr. Mary Watson series, is that it stands alone very well. Conversely, perhaps the best way to review this novel is by contrasting it to its predecessor.

Let’s start with the Holmes/Watson comparisons. In the first book, de Helen refers to the original iconic detective no less than 15 times. Well, guess how many comparisons she makes this time? Answer: zero. What this means is that the author has become more confident in her talents and more creative in her thinking. Ditto about her “explanations” about inconsistent point of view. Although her narrative shifts once or twice from Dr. Watson to omniscient, the author genuinely tries to stay within Watson’s experience. Not perfect, but a vast improvement.

The plot is fairly complex, as was the previous book’s. Shirley is hired to dissuade a famous young pop star, Oceane, from her romance with international playgirl Zaro, who was once (while disguised as a male) a soldier in the Afghan army. But when Zaro is attacked with acid, the sleuth’s job becomes one of finding the culprit. Although, as I said, the story is a good one, the main merit of this book is the growth of Mary Watson. Although in the first book there were a couple of exquisitely tiny hints that Mary might not be quite as asexual as she believes, in this book she discovers, quite by surprise, her lesbian identity. Although from puberty, she assumed she was simply asexual, she suddenly found that “something had awakened in me,” when she met real estate agent Beth Adams. The idea of a romance—maybe even a sexual relationship!—causes her to gush, “I was excited to the point of near-hysteria.” This is really good stuff: details that are all-too-rare in lesbian fiction, although we have all been there.

A touch worth noting, Shirley’s new “administrative assistant” has the greatest first name in lesbian literature: Lix. Hopefully in the next book we will learn her last name and some backstory. And maybe some more about Shirley, too. Or maybe Lix and Shirley will get it on. Whoo weee. I can’t wait. And Lix should get her own series. You heard it all here first.

Finally—and I rarely comment on this—the formatting of the e-book for this novel is the most sophisticated I have ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot. It may presage the day when e-books can look identical to print versions.

Negatives? Well the POV thing is still a little glitchy, as is Shirley’s lack of real individuality. And now that Sherlock himself is absent from de Helen’s pages, maybe it is time to stray from rewriting actual or nearly actual Conan Doyle titles.

Bottom line, give this one close to a 4; it is certainly worth a read. With the author continuing to hone her talents, I am looking forward to the next one.

For more than 250 other Lesbian Mystery reviews by Megan Casey, see her website athttp://sites.google.com/site/theartofthelesbianmysterynovel/  or join her Goodreads Lesbian Mystery group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116660-lesbian-mysteries