Book Review: The Killer Wore Leather

Title: The Killer Wore Leather
Author: Laura Antoniou
Genre: Mystery
Page #s: 400
Publication Date: 2013
Location in Series: 1/1

Summary:  In the Grand Sterling Hotel of Midtown Manhattan, home of the huge annual leather/BDSM/fetish ball and contest, Mr. & Ms. Global Leather (and bootblack), last year’s male winner lies dead on the floor of his suite, wearing only very frilly, bright yellow panties. Cormac “Mack” Steel made a lot of enemies in his year wearing the studded leather sash, not the least being his co-winner Mistress Ravenfyre. But she is not alone – there are over three thousand attendees at this year’s fetish-festooned event from all over the world, some of whom might have had some very personal issues with the corpse

Good Points:

• Fun read.
• Lesbian detective!
• Black detective!
• PoV of three outsiders investigating the convention, learning about the community
• Really fun, lively, mostly likable characters.
• Plotline is tight and the mystery keeps you guessing. Was it the boyfriend, the rival, the religious jerk, the ex, the other rival, slave Bitsy, anyone who badmouthed Mack?
• Characters of all queer sexualities and genders.  (The author has written a story for a trans&genderqueer erotica compilation which I have on reserve.)
• Also bodyshapes.
• Respectful of the community and all that it entails. ( We do have one character pov who is actually pretty uncomfortable about the convention. DeCosta thinks the whole thing is weird and uses language like ‘freak’ BUT by the end of the book he is less of a jerk.)
• ‘The BDSM/Leather community is all about Safe, Sane, and Consensual’ should be the byline of the book. By the end of It Rebecca, Nancy, and Dominick are all repeating the phrase before the worried convention goers can.
• Lots of fun subplots to follow.

Bad Points:

• I don’t actually know anything about the leather/BDSM community so someone else will have to judge that.
• I feel like DeCosta’s character toes the line of being a stereotype. The writer flips that on its head but it takes awhile.
• Nancy’s PoV drops off after a while, I think she was originally intended to be a bigger part of the story but she spends 99% of it off on her own. It’s a fun PoV and interesting but I would have liked more integration.

Triggers:

• Murder.
• Occasional language such as freak, crazy, fag.
• Misogyny, some bigotry & homophobia.
• Mentions of rape play.

Rating: 5/5