Please, stifle those similes: "He shot Blackie a look like a harpoon."
"She bounced off his chest like a rubber ball." "Stevie replied like a
backhand slap." Those three, plucked from pages 139, 140 and 141 of the
unfortunately overwrought "novel noir" "Under the Mink," are no worse
than several hundred more which litter the plot of a book which, frankly,
tries too hard.
The premise of this first novel by Lisa E. Davis is promising. It's set
in a late-1940's New York, where the mob runs the queer clubs in the
Village, the cops are on the take, and slumming to watch the fey fags and
butch dykes cross-dress for their amusement is what the rich swells do
best.
When the wealthy scion of a newspaper dynasty is found beaten to death in
the smelly gent's room of the Candy Box, singer Blackie Cole (born
Blanche Cohen) finds herself ensnared in a rambunctious plot involving a
father who hired someone to harass his son, the dead man's drop-dead
gorgeous sister, and an ex-lover still desperate for her affection.
Fans of the comic-caper genre may be amused, and the author's overlay of
a subculture's history is somewhat interesting. But there's something
about those similes that's downright irritating.
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