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

Book Review - The Gumshoe, the Witch and the Virtual Corpse

Titles: The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse & Gumshoe Gorilla

Author: Keith Hartman
Genre: Sci-Fi/Mystery
Page #s: 429 & 382
Publication Date: 1999 & 2001
Location in Series: 1 & 2 but series is unfinished

Summary: Drew Parker runs a detective agency (which advertises as three) with his partner, Jen Grey. Together they tackle cases both weird and downright bizarre. Drew, being gay, and Jen, being wiccan, steer clear of the overly religious cases, of which there are many. In a world where the witches truly have magic, there is a prenatal test for the ‘gay gene’, the Cherokee are suing the government for illegal land seizure, and you need five actors to play one part there is plenty of detective work to go around.

Good Points:

• Interesting, WEIRD storyline
• Like I can’t reiterate this enough
• Weird as fuck
• Good, solid mysteries that build the evidence slowly
• Transgender character! (In the first.) Ice in Summer is MAAB but refers to herself and is referred to by others with female pronouns.
• Interesting tech ideas, for being written at the millennial turn.
• Really loved the ideas about where T.V. could be headed. They have filters set up so if you wanted to watch, say, Sabrina The Teenage Witch with lesbian sex and lots of violence, you could, and if you wanted to watch Lost Girl or Spartacus with a religious message and absolutely no sex and violence you could also do that.
• Loved the idea of the Cherokee suing the government in world court, probably inspired by the U.S. vs. Sioux Nations case.
•  All of the characters are interesting and well-rounded, with faults and issues and feelings.
• Also, Peckers is a restaurant that exists. Yes. Peckers, aka, the reverse Hooters. They advertise with a wood pecker and I love it.

Bad Points:

• Racist depictions of Cherokee
  • I hate to say this, as I thought the Cherokee plotline was really interesting but when the characters are referred to as ‘Ice in Summer’, ‘Roaring Grizzly’ and ‘Laughing Bear’… (and it’s not just a translation, they introduce themselves this way)
  • Laughing Bear also belongs to a native American group (not tribe, just, group) who do things… backwards? It was weird sounding. Something along the lines of acting silly on purpose when the matter is serious and vice versa?
  • Ice in Summer is a… seer? Shaman? Has precognitive powers (again, this is a world where people actually have magical powers so it’s not just her).
  There are ‘returnees’ and 'purebloods’, creating tension within the Cherokee b/c the purebloods have learned to play the 'white man’s game’ and the returnees don’t want that
• Speaking of Ice in Summer, despite the fact that she refers to herself as female and everyone else does Drew has several points where he refers to her as a crossdresser.
• First book is a clusterfuck of PoVs. Imagine reading GRRM in 1st person with headings like ‘The Gumshoe’ and ‘The Witch’ instead of their names. On the first introduction. Second book is easier read, you know the characters and there are less random PoVs.
• GW&VC also reveals the villain about ¾ths of the way through which leads to frustration (on my part at least) as the characters continue to fumble.
• Anti-religious?
• Unfinished series, which might be a godsend as if Drew had become a seer for the Cherokee tribe or had to face down Roaring Grizzly I may have had to beat my face in with the book.

Triggers:

• Murder
• Violent murder?
• Desecration of corpses
• Televangelists
• Racist depictions of Cherokee tribe
• Slurs (gendered, sexual, and racial from the villains of our novels, light)
• Misgendering of transgender character
• Kidnapping of a child
• Abusive relationship
• Drugs

Rating: 8/10