About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS
by Joan Hess
St Martin's Minotaur, April 2007
304 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0312315015


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

As a Renaissance festival enthusiast, I was eager to read DAMSELS IN DISTRESS. How little my enthusiasm is shared by Hess was made clear on the second page; she describes the Society for Creative Anachronism, but renames it ARSE, an acronym that crops up with the regularity of a three-year-old shouting a newly-learned rude word.

Claire and her daughter Caron have been forcibly press-ganged into helping the local Renaissance festival, which is being slapped together by the local barony. Claire hates the concept on principle and spends all her ingenuity trying to brush off everyone involved, to the point of fleeing a party roughly twenty minutes after arrival, thinking "at that point, I would have gladly given [the hostess] all my money and jewelry, including the discreet diamond engagement ring on my left hand, just to get away." She is equally bored by the new artist in town, who turns out to be embarrassed to admit he does "silly comic books."

When Claire isn't avoiding them, she's avoiding her fiancé, Peter. He's out of town and mentioned a meeting with his ex-wife. Claire instantly assumes that her mother-in-law-to-be and the ex are planning on hijacking him and spins several elaborate daydreams on the subject. When Pester the Jester confides that he is in town to seek his real father, Claire adds fathering a bastard to Peter's imagined sins.

"I happen to be extraordinarily tactful and sensitive," Claire tells the reader (one of many times she praises attributes not otherwise in evidence). Good thing she cleared that up, as I was finding her intolerant, immature, and insecure.

The plot, which doesn't start until Hess makes sure that there's no reason why the reader should care anyway because Claire can't stand anyone, begins with the arson death of a dance teacher. It's a clumsy setup that only gets more credulity-straining with every turn and every new murder – not the least unbelievable being that Claire could be arsed to investigate the fate of any of these people. Farberville, Arkansas must have a truly weak police department. Which it might, because the cops are depicted as standing around gawking at costumes and calling the faire lame instead of finding and securing the crime scene when the next victim gets his head split with an axe during the banquet.

I will never understand why authors choose settings they despise. I can only assume that 16 mysteries in, Hess is running out of more congenial plots for her Claire Malloy series. Still, as a reader and as the kind of person the book is marketed towards, I found DAMSELS IN DISTRESS leagues more mean-spirited than the controversial BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN.

If you're at all fond of Renaissance festivals, historical re-enactment, or comics, there is no reason for you to buy this book; you're only spending your money to be insulted. You'd be better off picking up something that knows the difference between parody and offense, such as the work of Donna Andrews.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, August 2007

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]