fefaruary 6.2004 v
BOOKS
F
ebruary in Portland=several more
months of rain. Now is a good time to
plan your reading list to get you through
the dewy spring days ahead. If you’re
l<x>king for a guilty pleasure to round out
your list— a book that is light, fun and rea
sonably suspenseful— a cheesy lesbian detec
tive novel is the way to go. Here are four
recent ones— featuring lovely detectives and
lots of cheese.
I rrefutable
E vidence
by C .N . Winters; Renais-
sauce Alliance, 2002;
$15.95 softcover
ara Langforth is a
real estate agent
who witnesses a
murder after taking a
homeless man to lunch
in a seedy section of
Detroit. After barely escaping herself, she
finds a police station.
The dashing Lt. Denise Van Cook takes
the case and spends most of the novel giving
Sara round-the-clock protection from the
murderous thugs who are out to get her before
the case goes to trial. But no matter where
they try to hide— from Sara’s trust fund house
in the Bahamas to five-star hotels in Montre
al, and even to Niagara Falls— the bad guys
find them.
Who is giving them away? W ho cares.
The bigger question is, When are Sara and
Denise going to get it on? To he honest, this
is more of a cheesy romance than a cheesy
detective story. Sparks fly from the get-go,
and Denise must struggle to remain profes
sional despite the “sexual fire that scorched
through her veins.”
When it comes to cheese, this novel is Lim-
hurger. The quality of the writing is irrefutably
p<xir, hut the book is rather fun, especially if
you read it aloud and whisper, sigh, chuckle
and grin your way through it with the charac
ters— and maybe your own protector.
S treet R ules
by Baxter Clare; Bella
B(x>ks , 2003; $12.95
softcover
hen several
members of the
Estrella clan are
murdered in an appar
ent gang-related inci
dent, Lt. L.A . Franco,
aka Frank, o f the Los
M ilitary M eat
Springtime for Portland
When you’re looking for delicious bad,
look no further than lesbian mystery
by
K a r en K udej
Angeles Police Department and her team of
detectives begin to follow the easy lead.
The plot thickens when Placa Estrella, an
up-and-coming gangbanger, gets “smoked” the
day before she is supposed to meet with Frank
to tell her something important. With the help
of chief county coroner Gail Lawless, Frank
begins to suspect that one of her fellow “suits"
may he involved.
In the world of cheese, Street Rules ranks
a mild Swiss. The plot has some twists, hut
there are a few holes— several of them
created by references to the prior Detective
Franco novel, Bleeding Out. The slang is
overdone, the relationship between Frank
and G ail lacks enthusiasm, and the ending is
anti-climatic despite the potential for serious
drama.
But you have to give credit to a lesbian cop
who can wield Chicano street talk and thinks
Don Giovanni “sounds dope.”
A D ay T oo L u n g :
A H elen B lack
M ystery
by Pat Welch; Bella
Books, 2003; $12.95
softcover
H
elen Black is a
former detective
on parole in
small-town Mississip
pi. After doing time
for negligent man
slaughter, she is trying to get hack on her
feet with a warehouse job and a room at
Mrs. Mapple’s hoarding house. But when her
9-year old neighbor, Sissy, disappears,
H elen’s sleuthing instincts kick in.
She faces many obstacles, including a
gruff detective who knows too much about
her; an ex-cellmate who shows up to cause
trouble; and Mrs. M apple’s teen-age son,
who is in over his head. Fortunately, Helen
can find comfort at Rosie’s Café, a conve
niently located lesbian hangout. Sissy’s hot-
tie aunt, Valerie, doesn’t disappoint either.
The writing is rough around the edges, hut
with an action-packed plot and an unexpected
killer, I’d categorize A Day Too Dmg as a com
petent chcddar.
D amn S traight :
A L illian B yrd C rime S tory
by Elizabeth Sims;
Alyscm Books, 2003; $13.95 softcover
illian Byrd appears to he your average,
down-to-earth Midwestern lesbian with a
pet rabbit named Todd. She is hunkered
down for the winter in her cold Michigan
apartment, recovering from her previous
adventure in Holy Hell.
damn
straight
Political action
The West Wing meets gay fiction in M an About Town
by
C hristopher M c Q uain
f you’ve ever wondered what
would happen if the writers of
The West Wing were to concoct a
gay story line, Mark Merlis’ Man
About Town (Fourth Estate, 2003,
$24 hardcover) may partially
address that curiosity.
Joel, a middle-aged congression
al adviser, has been left by Sam, his
partner of 15 years. Sam is being
recruited to work on a bill that sub
tly yet viciously discriminates
against AIDS patients, and he’s
haunted by memories of his first erotic experi
ence: a pubescent glimpse of a male swimming-
trunks model in the back of an Esquire-like
magazine.
Joel’s curiosity about the ad leads him to
instigate a crazy search for the nameless
swimwear model of yore while neurotically
attempting to re-enter the dating scene and
feeling the heat at work. Joel is, for most of
the book, floundering— not very bravely, but
often very comically— through an unforeseen
midlife crisis.
Clearly, Merlis’ own background as a poli
cy analyst informs the book’s realistic glimpse
into the inner workings of our capital city’s
corridors of power and of Joel’s conflict over
doing a job requiring political impartiality,
even when it means participating in some
thing morally troubling.
The other elements are less scrutable. Joel
I
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When her best friend, Trudy, calls in distress
from Los Angeles, Lillian jumps at the chance
to offer her assistance in a warm climate. Lucky
for us all, her visit happens to coincide with
the Dinah Shore golf tournament.
Genie Maychild, “dominatrix of the LPGA
tour,” takes a liking to Lillian, and soon our
unlikely heroine is pulling all kinds of antics to
find out who is harassing
Genie.
While the plot may
he a little farfetched, the
writing is strong and
filled with humor. One
can’t help but like
Lillian— she is by far the
best detective of the
hunch. Damn Straight
rates a flavorful dill
havarti. j n
and his friends are a pernicious ele
ment: superficial, affluent, aging,
white gay men possessed of endless
self-absorption, tiresome cattiness
and a not-insignificant touch of
racism. Joel seems to suffer from
terminal boomeritis. Sexual orien
tation aside, all the broadest gener
alizations one could make regard
ing that generation— smugness,
self-aggrandizement coupled with
self-pity, an obsessive and graceless
pursuit of youth, a fixation on sta
tus and income, impotent liberal guilt— are
bountifully present.
Countermanding our protagonist's person
ality is Merlis’ seeming awareness o f its
repugnant aspects, and Man About Town
achieves its most natural feel when Joel is
treated as a loutish figure of satire. This could
he an overly flattering interpretation o f not
entirely clear intentions, hut, like Sinclair
Lewis and John Updike before him, Merlis is
capable o f showing us the rather pathetic yet
somehow moving humanity underlying the
(perhaps culturally imposed) layers o f foible
and folly.
If it’s slightly bothersome that Merlis is
indulgent of Joel’s worst qualities, he does strike
a tone ambivalent enough to set Man About
Town apart from the ghetto of simplistic gay fic
tion. It is, if not a monumental step forward, at
least a solid veer in the right direction. JH