Freeze My Margarita by
Lauren Henderson
pbk out August 98
(Hutchinson)
at £9.99
As amateur sleuths go, you couldn't get much further from Miss Marple than
Camden Town sculptress Sam Jones. With her fondness for recreational drugs,
sexual habits that owe more to cannibals than missionaries and a gob that
stings more than the whip it's easy to imagine her wielding, she's every
inch the indie detective.
Rather than starting in the library of a stately home, Sam's latest murder
inquiry is kickstarted in a fetish club when a man in a mask and a dog
collar -- not the C of E type -- turns out to be an old friend who wants
her to design some mobiles for a production of Midsummer Night's Dream.
Of course, when the woman who describes herself as 'the bastard love child
of Mulder and Scully' arrives, a corpse can't be far behind. In the
resulting investigation, Henderson snatches at every opportunity to
puncture the pretensions of the luvvies while still managing to respect the
professionals who make live theatre work.
That the working out of the plot stretches credibility even more than Sam's
bosom does to her rubber dress doesn't really matter when it's surrounded
by a cast of horribly believable characters set against a background that
feels authentic and is delivered in such smart-mouthed, fast paced prose.
Not since Ngaio Marsh has a crime writer captured the frenetic world of the
theatre and the egos that populate it. But Ngaio was never this hip. Or
this funny.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
Freeze My Margarita by
Lauren Henderson