Books for February, 2004

[pegkerr]

Death Trance by R.D. Zimmerman. This the first one of his books that I didn't really like. The gimmick is that the detective is a psychologist, a woman who is blind and in a wheelchair, who works with her brother, who does the physical investigation. She works by guiding her brother through hypnotic trances (it's her brother's ex-girlfriend who is the murder victim). The relationship between the siblings just sort of struck me as odd, weirdly emmeshed. The set up seemed a tad gimmicky, too. Eh. Don't think I'll pick up the next ones in the series. I like his gay television investigative reporter series, the one that starts with Closet.

The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough (whose better known as author of The Thorn Birds). Re-read. Kij sent this to me as a comfort book, and it's great for that. Poor, scrappy heroine gets to give her snooty relatives their comeuppance. Fun escapist fluff.

The Ropemaker, by Peter Dickinson (husband, btw, of Robin McKinley). This recently won a Mythopoeic Award, for chidren's lit, I think. Um. Yeah. Pretty good. Sorta interesting. Some very familiar trope in it: girl heroine leaves home because home is threatened; she thinks she has no magic, unlike her family, when actually she has the greatest magic of all. I'm not sure I'll be in any hurry to read it again, but it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Am now re-reading Mansfield Park, so that will be on next month's list.

List is short, yes. (I've been reading an enormous amount of unpublished stuff.)

Comments

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

I always thought The Ladies of Missalonghi would make a wonderful stage musical. You could have some awesome production numbers with all of those tall blondes. :D

[fairmer.livejournal.com]

Arrayed in every shade of pink, right? Or is that a different book I'm thinking of?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the one!

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

As Peg said, you've got it right. And poor Missy was going to have to wear the horrid apricot dress. I could really picture her vivid red wedding gown, just like a madam's! It's one of those stories that wouldn't HAVE to retain an Australian setting, either; it could easily be set in the old West in the US. (I remember recently seeing that someone on their LJ was wondering why the film of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity was set in Chicago. It's called where the money is, baby.)

queer mysteries

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

I read I think CLOSET or TRIBE by Zimmerman because they'd given them out free at one of the Lambda Literary Awards and even then I resented spending the time on it.

John Morgan Wilson's Benjamin Justice series is quite good, although very dark.

The Joseph Hansen series featuring Dave Brandstetter is classic and still very readable. Nathan Aldayne (pseudonym for Michael McDowell, who wrote numerous horror/fantasy/etc. novels, not to mention BEETLJUICE and many other films, and his partner) are really fun (there are 4 of them).

I liked the Grant Michaels gay mystery series (no longer being published, although there are 8 of them out I think) and for heavy-handed activism books the Richard Stevenson's are fine (sort of the gay male version of Ellen Hart, nothing really exciting but readable and heavy handedly about social issues).

I like Barbara Wilson a lot, and have read both her series as well as her non-mystery novels. Her feminist mysteries handle the themes with a lot of subtlety, and I really like how her character solves mysteries as a way of trying to make sense of her parents' accidental death in a car accident, as if by putting order on other people's deaths can help her get closure on this personal grief. (Her Cassandra Reilley series, featuring a translator, are more adventure-based and lots of fun, with all sorts of exotic cultural tidbits woven into the plots. The film GAUDI AFTERNOON was based on the third book in that series.)

I thought Val McDermid's BLUE GENES and BOOKED FOR MURDER, both from different series, were top notch (both have lesbian plots or subplots) but I haven't liked any of the other books in either series really. But those two are worth tracking down.

For a non-gay series, my top three recos would be S. R. Rozan's Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak series, and Jane Haddam's Gregor Demarkian series.

For what you're doing now, the Shugak would probably be the most appropriate. (Aleutian detective, with all her struggles of navigating Native and western cultural identites, etc. No magical fish, but certainly lots of salmon lore... and plenty of ice! All set in Alaska.)