A MURDEROUS BUSINESS, first Harriman & Mancini lesbian-led historical mystery

A MURDEROUS BUSINESS (Harriman & Mancini #1)
CATHY PEGAU
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Cathy Pegau's sharp, captivating historical mystery about two women in turn-of-the-century New York solving murder and fighting the heteropatriarchy.

There can be a blurry line between what is ethical and what is legal.

Margot Baxter Harriman took the reins of B&H Foods after her father passed. It’s not easy being a business woman in 1912, but she is determined to continue what her grandparents started decades ago, no matter what it takes.

When Margot finds Mrs. Gilroy, her father’s former assistant, dead in the office with a half-finished note confessing to nebulous misdeeds, she seeks out help from a very discreet, private investigator to figure out what's going on. Her company, and her good name, depends on determining the truth, otherwise she could lose everything, including her freedom.

Loretta “Rett” Mancini has run her father’s investigation operation since he started becoming increasingly forgetful. When Margot offers her the chance to look into the potential scandal with B&H, she jumps at the chance.

But the more the two dig, the more it becomes clear that Margot's company may be too far lost...and her life is at stake.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Superior iteration of a sleuthing odd couple, platonic edition. The lesbian protagonists are each trying to prove themselves by solving this crime. Rett Mancini's life partner, a nurse called Ceecee, is not terribly filled out as a character, but she isn't backgrounded...her existence is a source of stress between Rett and her private-dick dad. Her mother's not fussed, interestingly, by having an "abnormal" daughter.

Margot inherits her father's food-canning business, and bashes her nose into the harsh reality that she lives in a gilded cage. The canning business is in crisis due to an adulteration scandal. In 1912, that was huge news: next to the Titanic's recent sinking, the still-new Food and Drug Administration (FDA as we know it today) was still rooting out abusive and dangerous practices in the US food chain because of the rampant fraud that led to its founding. Discovering her father's retired right-hand woman dead, inside the office she so recently left, with an unfinished note to Margot that lacks specificity but hints at skulduggery, Margot hires Rett at the moment Papa Mancini chucks her out of the family detective agency for being unnatural.

Margot needs the business to stay open, for practical and ego reasons. Rett needs the spondulix from Margot to live, and wants badly to show her homophobic father he's wrong about her ability to do the work despite being abnormal. Rett summons a common stage entertainer, magicianesque Shiloh, to assist with the details of solving Margot's case. There blooms a lovely fondness between those ladies, as wealthy, sheltered Margot begins her journey out of closet and cage...within limits, I'll wager, that will present problems as Margot is already trying to run the canning business and date a common entertainer on the sly. What could add more spice to a love than that?

Which leads me to explain my rating. This is a good, cozy mystery, set in a time of upheaval and possibility. Some of the very best US institutions were created; some people were freer than ever before; and some were not. My tribe, the queers, were decidedly not included among the social-loosening winners for very long. The excitement of ever-improving quality of life inventions and products was heady. A hefty dose of that comes through in the alternating narration of chapters between Margot and Rett. Unlike most series-starting novels, Author Pegau resists making the central sleuthing duo a couple...thank all those useless gods for that! It felt liberating, and lifted my opinion of a well-written, interestingly placed, but not really surprising story up a notch. Had the main duo been made a romantic couple I'd've rated it a 3.5 and relegated it to a short review to be forgotten.

It took vision for Author Pegau to see how much more good, positive story-developmental material there was in making the couples in her lesbian-demimonde asymmetric in almost every way, but still show how true and heartfelt their interconnectedness is.

Kudos, Author Pegau, and when's the next one coming? Put me on the list, please.

BAD MAKES BAD, second Cherry Orozco cozy lesbian horror...that even *looks* weird typed out

BAD MAKES BAD
ILYN WELCH (A Cherry Orozco Mystery #2)
Shotgun Honey Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Cherry Orozco keeps slapping women—in her dreams. And she’s a sleep-deprived mess. Free group therapy at a neighborhood mental-health center steers her to confront issues of past and present trauma, including those about childhood frenemy Lana Picasso, a one-psycho hazing factory. Adding to her angst is the fact some monster is on the loose, booby-trapping area playgrounds with razor blades among other crimes.

The support sessions appear to help, plus Cherry clicks with a kindred smart-ass named Parvati who devours serial-killer paperbacks and clashes with the indifferent therapist. As group members bare their souls and work on coping strategies, the razor-blade incidents escalate outside the center’s walls. When the villainy is brought up at therapy, Parvati goes overboard relishing the gory details, making her Cherry’s number-one suspect—until she disappears.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Book 2 of two so far, and what a weird find it is! Book 1 is Signs of Pain, which I have not read...yet...but, as this is a development from it, I think I get the drift.

I've said often enough that horror only scares me when it's about people. This weirdly cozy story is in the vein (!) of Dan Wells's I Am Not a Serial Killer. Only this time it's queer and female-centered, which renders (!) it an even-more relatable process of struggle against urges one is not wise to give in to...to put it mildly. And Cherry Orozco, on Ilyn Welch's storyrelling hands, still finds a credible way to harness the energy of the urges in her group therapy sessions.

Given the nature of those urges, she's got a rough go to get something good out of it. The story's got the absolute weirdest cozy vibe imaginable. I was expecting something along the lines of Dexter's hyperbloody quirkiness, and instead got something that vibes like Joan Hess's Maggody. (Though I don't want to mislead you: there is gore. Just, well, cozy gore.) That's a compliment of a high order as Arly (short for "Aerial" as in "photo") and her mom Ruby Bee (short for Rubella Belinda, as in the thing we get our kids vaccinated against) are genuinely fun to hang (!) with.

I've got to stop.

So Cherry has to get, and keep, her head in shape to find the rotten-souled responsible party behind a series of horrible mutilations of kids who encounter the razor blades left on playgrounds. As this is so horrifying to me I wanted a revenge-fantasy ending with all kinds of screaming and blood spurting as the perp was dismembered slowly. (I disapprove of traumatizing children.) Buuut noooo we got a...much more sane, more proportional if less condign ending. Dammit!

Honestly, though, do you need a better reason to pick these up than the fact they're set in Raptor Flats?! I mean! Raptor. Flats. I've about got my trunks half-packed for the move. The side characters all have a well-settled feel, so I'm guessing they's mostly brought along from book 1. Crucially I felt more like I wanted to go get to know them, not like I was trying to make new friends in high school.

The oddness of the idea is what makes my response to the book so welcoming, I think. I'm delighted by Cherry and her inner monologue; I'm charmed by the folk of Raptor Flats; I'm ready to go back already. I'm not going to tell you it's an intricately plotted puzzle. Instead I'll tell you that, every step of the way, Ilyn Welch told me a story I enjoyed reading and believed (within my scope of suspension of disbelief) was completely true to the people it involved.

I even accepted the villain's heinous villainy, and what a genuinely detestable villain indeed!, and thus child-endangering actions. Though I won't again. Once is all you get.

Fun #Deathtober romp, well worth your time and such a truly minimal amount of your treaure.

A CRIME OF SECRETS (A Donner & Longstreet Mystery #1) lesbian-led Gilded Age New York series you need to read

A CRIME OF SECRETS (A Donner & Longstreet Mystery #1)
ANN APTAKER
Bywater Books
$9.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: New York City, 1899.

A city on the cusp of a new century. A city growing taller, faster, a city of new inventions, new ideas—and old dangers on its shadowy streets where crime, misery, and murder lurk.

When Pauline Godfrey, a young woman embodying the coming modern age, is viciously murdered, her throat cut, private inquiry agents Finola “Fin” Donner and Devorah Longstreet must navigate a world of violence and passion, lust and betrayal, where duty is twisted into bitter obedience and love is soiled.

Fin, a tough survivor of the dockside slums, and her beloved companion, the elegant, intellectual socialite Devorah, probe deep into the festering secrets of a family, the rot and corruption of the police department, and the sinister world of the city’s thieves, whores, and thugs to find the killer.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sapphic sleuths in Gilded Age Manhattan? ANN APTAKER penned?! Sign me right the *bleep* up! Do I particularly care whose murder this concerns? Nope! I want the pleasure of watching as Author Aptaker upends the worldview of the hoi polloi with two people who decline to participate in their tedious little black-or-white, top-or-bottom nuanceless tosh.

That, comme d'habitude, she does. *happy sigh*

A new historical fiction crime series is always a welcome development for me.I like the QUILTBAG worlds that they inhabit to come back alive and crack the false front of heteronormative society's homogeneity without our homosexuality into flinders. Author Aptaker has done this before with the Cantor Gold Crimes series in New York's pre-Stonewall art world. They're refreshingly nonconformist and still part of the long mystery novel tradition of upholding ma'at.

I don't use "law and order" here, because cruel, immoral laws are passed daily all over the world, and vicious repressive order maintained by the small-souled pursey-lipped fear-driven fools that abound in every single time period of human history. Ma'at means something altogether more agreeable to me (and I suspect to most others): The rightness and fitness of things in the world; the always joyous sense of your world running well. Ma'at herself is the center of the Afterlife as the one who weighs the dead person's heart against her feather; if the heart is heavier than the feather, that person is utterly expunged; is prevented thereby from participating in an eternal existence of harmony and pleasure. I wonder often how many righteous crusaders for Truth God and Justice will pass this test....

Certainly the outwardly, conformally Proper and Good Citizens in this story won't. How this series will take that inner-vs-outer duality ball and run with it is set up with clarity and simplicity in the choice of main charcters. Fin and Dev are from wildly different milieux, one a rough-and-tumble survivor of the wild and violent streets and the other a Lady of Quality. Very much like Nick and Nora, Author Aptaker's couple are beautifully suited in ways they continue to discover as their time together expands and their experience of each other's kindness and blindness deepens. In this initial outing, the glossy surfaces are just not quite ever matched by smooth underpinnings. Rough exteriors can, and most likely will, smooth out. Long-unquestioned shibboleths fall, leaving no thick coatings of dust just light blurrings of their outlines. It's a gift to be allowed to see a character's growth instead of meeting them fully formed here in the first book. Well chosen, Author Aptaker!

The web of lies and vileness that Fin and Dev unravel in 1899 Manhattan is nothing if not relevant to today's world where misery is considered the proper condition of the poor, the disabled, the Other. The horrible perpetuators of that misery appall and offend these upright people, who subscribe to the ma'at I described above. The fact that they come at it from very different starting points gives rise to some of the most relatable conflicts in the story: Dev feels, for example, the ugly gnaw of jealousy; Fin the hollowness of insecurity. These being inevitable in any long-term relationship, it's good to see them here, and see them seen off by the women...together.

What I most needed on a hot July weekend when going outside was, for multiple reasons, not a great idea. It kept me engaged in, interested by, rooting for, our ma'at-maintaining duo. There's not a lot stronger recommendation I can give you.

THE BARROW WILL SEND WHAT IT MAY, second Danielle Cain supernatural investigation

THE BARROW WILL SEND WHAT IT MAY
MARGARET KILLJOY (Danielle Cain #2)
Tor.com Publishing
$3.99 ebook platforms, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Margaret Killjoy’s Danielle Cain series is a dropkick-in-the-mouth anarcho-punk fantasy that pits traveling anarchist Danielle Cain against eternal spirits, hypocritical ideologues, and brutal, unfeeling officers of the law.

Now a nascent demon-hunting crew on the lam, Danielle and her friends arrive in a small town that contains a secret occult library run by anarchists and residents who claim to have come back from the dead. When Danielle and her crew investigate, they are put directly in the crosshairs of a necromancer’s wrath — whose actions threaten to trigger the apocalypse itself.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANKS Y'ALL.

My Review: You don't know how good an author's work is until you realize, when reading their new work, that you've missed these characters, this world, this skewed vision of life. That's what happened to me when I finally got around to reading Author Killjoy's latest tale of Danielle Cain and her band of merry pranksters (and now is the moment I say to the spoilerphobic that this next bit is a HUGE HONKING SPOILER for The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, which see):
...

...

...

...

...okay, are the spoilerphobes gone? Good. Here's the moment I came home:

A demon killed those police officers, sir. It wasn’t us. They probably shouldn’t have pulled guns out around a bloodred, three-antlered deer with obvious supernatural agility, so whose fault was it really.

That's just effin' awesome. I can't even with Killjoy!

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the following lines made my evil, withered soul batten like a leech on an artery:

Sometimes I think I let myself become addicted to coffee not because I liked it, not because caffeine did me any favors, but because it takes the urge of a physical addiction to provide any kind of upside to getting out of bed in the morning.

*oooo aaah* Killjoy speaks my mother(fuckin) tongue!

But the story. Yes, the story, the story, one must always serve the story. I found the events of this outing with Danielle and company a little bit on the rushed side, that is, until I realized we're in the same continuum as the last story and the data we need is all going to be relevant one day soon. I liked the new people the group met; I found the Montana setting used more as a form of social shorthand than a background character the way Freedom, Iowa, was in the last book. That it was effective I grant you, since it wasn't until a scene taking pace in Glacier National Park came and went without my so much as smelling a pine tree before I noticed it fully. Prior to that, I had a niggling sense of something not quite full about my cup of story. I understand how little room there is in under 200pp for the author to go hog wild with scenery and such-like. I'd've liked just a bit more, though.

The supernatural elements, the raising of the dead and concomitant magjicqkal spooky do's, the visuals and olfactories that go with, were here in plenty! I was deeply interested in The Killjoy Take on the omnipresent and worn-thinner-than-gossamer zombie trope. I must say it was a relief not to hate it. I was down with the whole idea, the way it's managed, and the fascinating departure from the more...meaty...tone that most fictioneers use in the wake of The Walking Dead.

Most of all, though, I love these stories because Danielle is a great character. She's a traveler, she does not put down roots but instead epiphytically sucks nourishment from the heavy air of mystery and magjicqk that surrounds her and, I think, likely always has. I find her love for another person realistic and well-realized. She doesn't go into frothing fits of adoration but she sure as hell notices when Brynn, her love object from last book, pays a little too much attention to someone new. Yet she's not possessive, really, she doesn't do the victim's-rights polka all over Brynn. After all this is a character who thinks:

There’s never enough air or something once you barricade the doors. There’re always too many people, both inside and outside, when you barricade the doors.

Yes. I concur, and like Author Killjoy, I don't limit my sense of being suffocated to my own personal body, but to everyone everywhere.

Should you read these novellas? If you come in with the spirit of adventure and of acceptance for difference that Author Killjoy does. Yes, The Other is demonized...when The Other is an actual demon, or the slave of one. It's the **intent** that Author Killjoy uses to brand The Other. Their appearance, their state of lifedeath, none of that matters so long as one isn't attempting Livingism by radical means of forcing an unconsulted, non-consenting Other to be alive!

You know what I wish more than anything? I wish Margaret Killjoy would get inspired and write some *good* Social Justice Warrior stories of Doctor Who, that's what. The tedious, lumpen things Chibnall and company are turning out, well, just not that good I'm afraid. This book is *good* woke supernatural bloody scary fiction. Find you way to the UK, Margaret Killjoy, just don't forget about Danielle and Scooby-group of Doom! (Would Vulture like that one, or Danielle?)

THE LAMB WILL SLAUGHTER THE LION, punk trans writer blows old man's mind

THE LAMB WILL SLAUGHTER THE LION
MARGARET KILLJOY (Danielle Cain #1)
Tor.com
$3.99 ebook, $14.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Danielle Cain is a queer punk rock traveler, jaded from a decade on the road. Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious and sudden suicide, she ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa. All is not well in Freedom, however: things went awry after the town’s residents summoned a protector spirit to serve as their judge and executioner.

Danielle shows up in time to witness the spirit—a blood-red, three-antlered deer—begin to turn on its summoners. Danielle and her new friends have to act fast if they’re going to save the town—or get out alive.

THE PUBLISHER PROVIDED ME WITH A REVIEW COPY. THANK YOU.

My Review: ...the fuck did I just read...?

Genderqueer, gay, celibate, punk, anarchist, shaman-magical people find a town and found a stateless collective that they defend by summoning a demon to make the world stay the fuck away.

I think.

Fantasy doesn't get more exciting than this. I'm mortally sick of reading yet another iteration of Lord of the Rings and being told it's New! Different! Amazing! No. It's not. But this? This is new, different, exciting. It even eschews urban fantasy tropes. It's refreshing and I'm eager for the next one, coming out sometime in 2018.

Margaret Killjoy, with your pretty hazel green eyes, you made my reading year. This book is a perfect gift item for the jaded fantasy reader, or the fantasy-resistant reader (me) on your Yule gifting list.

My Young Gentleman Caller picked this book up during his Thanksgiving surprise visit to me. (Hint: If you want to see whether someone is Interested in you not just looking for something from you, bore them. If they hang, they're Interested.) His comments are quoted for y'all's amusement and edification.

The only electric light I saw shone inside a small grocery, which was lit up by its bank of fluorescents. The place was filled with furniture, tools, and food. Well-lettered in red and yellow along the facade were the words: EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE. A folding sidewalk sign out front read: A FREE MARKET SHOULD MEAN EVERYTHING IS FREE.

YGC: Did you write this? You don't look like a Margaret but it sounds like you.
ME: Nope. Innocent. Though Margaret's got beautiful eyes.
{WE look at @magpiekilljoy on Twitter}
YGC: Appalachia's far enough away.
ME: For what?
YGC: That I don't have to get worried about you wandering off.

"Cuddling sounds nice," I said.

It should have been nice. The moonlight came in through the circular window, and she laid on her back as I nuzzled up with my head on her. It had been months at least since I'd been with anyone, even slept next to anyone, and my skin was alive at her touch. I could hear her steady breath, smell her pheromones. For a moment, just a short peaceful moment, I was able to revel in that simple pleasure.

YGC: That made me feel lonely.
ME: Yeah, me too.
YGC: Feeling lonely doesn't scare me as much since I started reading.
ME:
YGC: *keeps reading*

"I have this wicked crush on you," Brynn continued, "but also I'm celibate, at least for now. So I guess I wanted to just get both of those things out there before I get too hung up on you or lead you on. Also there's a non-zero chance we're both going to get eaten by a demon sometime soon."
"I haven't let anyone in for awhile," I said, after thinking about it. "You're a total badass and you're a babe. I mean, you've got everything I should want. But yeah, walls. Lots of walls.
I probably can't be with anyone while I'm like this."
"A perfect match," she said.
"Indeed."

YGC: *finishes reading aloud, stares at me*
ME: (defensive) What?
YGC: ::eyeroll::
ME: What are you suggesting?! (more defensive)
YGC: *peck*

"Fucking hell," Thursday said. "It's almost like you can't summon otherworldly beings into existence, let them loose on your enemies, and set up a culture of worship around them without people getting all crazy."

YGC: I call bullshit!
ME: On what?
YGC: You totally wrote this! That sounds just like you!
ME: Thanks, I appreciate the compliment, but no I didn't.
YGC: Go know from there's another sarcastic old smartass in the world.
ME: Love you too, ya little pisher.
YGC: *blush*

After he finished the book, it was time for the Young Gentleman Caller to meet up with his friends for whatever sporting event they were going to watch. As he left, I got another peck and a quiet, "I love reading with you."

Margaret Killjoy, you ROCK!!