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MATING SEASON
by Jon Loomis
St Martin's Minotaur, May 2009
304 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0312367708


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I hadn't heard of HIGH SEASON so author and characters here are new to me. I am quite taken with the cop protagonists. There's an ease and a friendship that's developed between former Baltimore cop Frank Coffin and his partner, the likable Officer Lola Winters. It's refreshing to read that his partner isn't worried and jealous and that he actually likes and respects his lesbian cop partner. This is welcome reading. The story takes for granted that gay men and lesbian women are part of the community, the landscape here, and Coffin more than deals with it. He gets it. The professional partnership works, and straight men and lesbians can be friends, can work together. .

On the other hand, Frank's girlfriend Jamie is wholly irritating. She's one-dimensional, desperate for a child (she miscarried recently) and so uses Frank as a baby-maker and nothing more. It's tasteless and tiresome and for me, so uncool. "Take off your pants" is not loving. I don't need romantic but I would hope for a little "I love you" in there. Then again, I've never had the urge, the attitude makes me a tad uncomfortable. Jamie's pretty cardboard, when she deserves better.

It also seems that very few straight marriages in Provincetown are stable. The number of men who had relationships with Kenji is shocking, and a bit sad. Very little reason is given for their behavior, no matter what shape their marriages are in. Relationships with Kenji Sole who was, admittedly, beautiful but open about her promiscuity and who pretty clearly played control games with her lovers seemed sad. The men are such sad sacks. Can't anyone say "no"? Okay, she was hot, sexy. I get that. Her death puts paid to several marriages. The wives deserve better.

The investigation is interesting, the lead characters are pretty cool, except as noted, Frank's sex life gets in the way for me. Provincetown is a tourist mecca in some months; the rest of the time this is a relatively small community. I got a good sense of that community, of the town, and recognized the parts of Boston that Coffin visited, although occasionally I found the writing clunky. While at a Vietnamese restaurant, the guy ate a bean sprout which "tasted like water." If you can taste your water, call the health department.

The book's pacing was a problem. The last few short chapters start speeding up and the resolution is nearly frantic. There are ridiculous frenzied chase scenes, scenes in sex shops which seemed shoved in for last minute thrills, short chapters that seem totally unnecessary - it's as if Loomis or an editor wanted them in and it was decided to put them at the end, and it throws off the whole book for me. It seems, once again, as if the author was facing deadline and couldn't wrap things up properly; or to be a little fanciful, as if the author had decided, based on the book's title and theme, "enough foreplay, we gotta get to the main event and soon." We meet certain characters too far into the book, and some of the dialogue seems to hint that we should recognize these guys; I suspect I would have had I read the preceding book. You can't do that, even in a series. You can't assume your readers know who Uncle Fred is or why he's important.

There are hints and flat-out statements about "mating" in the book (it's not mating season for certain animals, but they are seen breaking those rules, and of course there's Frank and Jamie. At the end of MATING SEASON I wondered, though it's unlikely, if Loomis had intentionally written an outline that started slow and sped up toward the end. Sort of like writing a novel to the rhythm of "Bolero". Not a good idea.

Reviewed by Andi Shechter, June 2009

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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