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trin's review
4.0
This series continues to be a blast, rich in atmosphere -- this time, summer in early '80s Provincetown and the delightfully decadent gay scene. I want to eat in all of these cheap, ridiculous restaurants (from the perspective of pandemic year three: I want to eat in a restaurant) and go to all these bars and parties. Save, crucially, the deliberately tasteless soiree at the beginning, which main characters attend in black and yellowface, a section I visibly cringed throughout. These books give me a lot of nostalgia for an idealized past, but sometimes some cracks show.
claudia_is_reading's review against another edition
4.0
Well, Valentin and Clarissa are now at Provincetown for the summer. Valentin working as a bartender and cruising as if the world was about to end; Clarissa, working in a tourist-trap that sells the tasteless knickknacks that even the evilest person in the Universe couldn't imagine. But at least she had nabbed a hot cop for herself.
Now, if she were to stop finding dead bodies, well... everywhere! that would be nice, too.
This is funny, entertaining and well-written, with Clarissa on the lead, trying to find what's really going on while Valentine refuses to acknowledge any possibility that the deaths are another thing than accidents or suicides.
And it's also a portrait of the gay's summer Paradise, with a lot of wonderful, quirky characters and the particular fashion sense of the '80s. So many padded shoulders!
And believe me, when the end comes, you'll be as surprised as everybody there was :P
A very recommended read.
Now, if she were to stop finding dead bodies, well... everywhere! that would be nice, too.
This is funny, entertaining and well-written, with Clarissa on the lead, trying to find what's really going on while Valentine refuses to acknowledge any possibility that the deaths are another thing than accidents or suicides.
And it's also a portrait of the gay's summer Paradise, with a lot of wonderful, quirky characters and the particular fashion sense of the '80s. So many padded shoulders!
And believe me, when the end comes, you'll be as surprised as everybody there was :P
A very recommended read.
quirkycynic's review against another edition
3.0
Better and more enjoyable than the first book in the series -- by which I mean it has a much better and more interesting central mystery, a real whodunit this time -- but still I just didn't find myself loving these Nathan Aldyne books as much as I thought I would.
Part of this I guess is the overabundance of campy humour which gets tiring after a while, as well as the over-the-top and frequently obnoxious characters (in particular Clarisse Lovelace, whose sole characteristic is that she constantly acts like a drag queen -- that is, how a gay man would want or imagine a woman to act like if he was writing her as the co-protagonist of his campy mystery novel).
I will say one thing I did like was that it makes total sense to me to set an amateur detective novel in the queer community -- so much of the investigation in the plot feels like it was done just by the characters gossiping with other queer people. That part's realistic, at least... I also loved the choice by the author(s) in ignoring the AIDS epidemic entirely and giving the early 80s setting a real time capsule feeling of an era gone-by.
What was much less cool at the same time, though, was the time capsule of also being set in a period in which the queer community was much, much more casually racist and misogynistic than now (pro tip: perhaps it's not a good idea to introduce your novel with your two protagonists going to a costume party in yellowface and as a slave owner, respectively. I mean...not a good look then or now).
Part of this I guess is the overabundance of campy humour which gets tiring after a while, as well as the over-the-top and frequently obnoxious characters (in particular Clarisse Lovelace, whose sole characteristic is that she constantly acts like a drag queen -- that is, how a gay man would want or imagine a woman to act like if he was writing her as the co-protagonist of his campy mystery novel).
I will say one thing I did like was that it makes total sense to me to set an amateur detective novel in the queer community -- so much of the investigation in the plot feels like it was done just by the characters gossiping with other queer people. That part's realistic, at least... I also loved the choice by the author(s) in ignoring the AIDS epidemic entirely and giving the early 80s setting a real time capsule feeling of an era gone-by.
What was much less cool at the same time, though, was the time capsule of also being set in a period in which the queer community was much, much more casually racist and misogynistic than now (pro tip: perhaps it's not a good idea to introduce your novel with your two protagonists going to a costume party in yellowface and as a slave owner, respectively. I mean...not a good look then or now).
claudia_is_reading's review against another edition
4.0
Well, Valentin and Clarissa are now at Provincetown for the summer. Valentin working as a bartender and cruising as if the world was about to end; Clarissa, working in a tourist-trap that sells the tasteless knickknacks that even the evilest person in the Universe couldn't imagine. But at least she had nabbed a hot cop for herself.
Now, if she were to stop finding dead bodies, well... everywhere! that would be nice, too.
This is funny, entertaining and well-written, with Clarissa on the lead, trying to find what's really going on while Valentine refuses to acknowledge any possibility that the deaths are another thing than accidents or suicides.
And it's also a portrait of the gay's summer Paradise, with a lot of wonderful, quirky characters and the particular fashion sense of the '80s. So many padded shoulders!
And believe me, when the end comes, you'll be as surprised as everybody there was :P
A very recommended read.
Now, if she were to stop finding dead bodies, well... everywhere! that would be nice, too.
This is funny, entertaining and well-written, with Clarissa on the lead, trying to find what's really going on while Valentine refuses to acknowledge any possibility that the deaths are another thing than accidents or suicides.
And it's also a portrait of the gay's summer Paradise, with a lot of wonderful, quirky characters and the particular fashion sense of the '80s. So many padded shoulders!
And believe me, when the end comes, you'll be as surprised as everybody there was :P
A very recommended read.
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