Gay & Lesbian Fiction, Women Detectives - Fiction, Multicultural Detectives - Fiction, Erotica

The Monkey's Mask

Name: The Monkey's Mask
Author: Dorothy Porter
ISBN: 9780641004742

by Dorothy Porter

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Overview

Private investigator Jill Fitzpatrick didn't know that the poetry scene could be as sticky as sex, or that words could open up your legs one minute and open up your grave the next. Mickey didn't know it either - Mickey who loved poetry and read it every day. Sweet girl, just nineteen, the life strangled out of her. Put on the case by Mickey's suburbanite parents, Jill's up to her ears in sleazy poets, corruption and deceit. And seduction - lovely, intoxicating seduction - dished up by Mickey's former poetry professor, Diana Maitland. Like hot wine, Diana fills Jill's head, her throat, her lungs; heavy glassfuls soaking her mind. Deep digging into the tightly knit verse community turns up some dangerous truth, truth that just isn't beauty. Jill's closer than she knows, but killers don't like to be caught, and poets' pens can bleed more than just ink.

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Editorials

Library Journal

Like Sam Spade, the archetypal hero of Dashiell Hammett's classic Maltese Falcon (1930), Jill Fitzpatrick, the lesbian private eye of Porter's mystery novel-in-verse, is torn between passionate love and professional ethics. On the trail of the murderer of Mickey Norris, a university coed and would-be poet, Jill falls hopelessly in love with Professor Diana Maitland, one of Mickey's former tutors-and a crucial piece of the puzzle. While sleuthing, Jill uncovers the hypocrisy of the poetry scene in Sydney, Australia, likening herself to a Medusa who will "turn those fraud poets/to marble." Porter (The Witch Number, International Specialized Bk. Svcs., 1993) writes short verse in a staccato, telegraphic style accented by salty language and graphic Australian slang, for which she provides a delightful glossary. A highly readable addition to larger poetry collections.-Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.