Megan Casey (Author of The Lesbian Private Eye)

Megan is now friends with Davide Borrelli
May 04, 2026 09:12PM · like
Megan rated a book really liked it Salt Rock Mysteries by Magdalena Zschokke	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is described on the front cover as “A novel with murder,” and so it is. In other words, it reads and is constructed like a typical work of literature, not a mystery. The author’s style is spare, not flowery, but it gets the job done. It’s a book ...more
May 03, 2026 04:36PM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Salt Rock Mysteries by Magdalena Zschokke. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Salt Rock Mysteries by Magdalena Zschokke <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Megan rated a book it was ok Accidental Killer (The Sarah White Mysteries #1) by Tong Zhang (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The digital publishing revolution began in 2009, when both Amazon and Smashwords enabled authors to publish their own books in electronic form. If these authors did their own formatting, cover design, editing, and proofreading, e-book publishing coul ...more
May 03, 2026 04:33PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Accidental Killer by Tong Zhang. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Accidental Killer by Tong Zhang <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Megan rated a book it was ok White Noise by Eve Zaremba	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Like The Butterfly Effect this, the last book in the Helen Keremos series, is written in the third person—there are even places where it looks like it may have begun as first person but was changed at the last minute. Also like The Butterfly Effect, ...more
May 03, 2026 04:31PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of White Noise by Eve Zaremba. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — White Noise by Eve Zaremba <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Megan rated a book it was ok The Butterfly Effect (A Helen Keremos Mystery) by Eve Zaremba	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I made the mistake of reading this book first—it was the only one in the library. But in this, the fifth offering in the Helen Keremos mystery series, the author doesn't really have much left to pad the book with. In other words, we don't really find ...more
May 03, 2026 04:29PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Butterfly Effect by Eve Zaremba. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Butterfly Effect by Eve Zaremba <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Megan rated a book really liked it Uneasy Lies (A Helen Keremos Mystery) by Eve Zaremba	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The fourth book in the Helen Keremos mystery series finds Helen back in Toronto. Her affair with Alice Caplan, who we met in Beyond Hope is getting rocky, so when another of her exes—Clare Harwood—offers her a job as temporary Head of Security in a l ...more
May 03, 2026 04:27PM · 1 like · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Uneasy Lies by Eve Zaremba. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Uneasy Lies by Eve Zaremba <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Megan rated a book really liked it Beyond Hope (A Helen Keremos Mystery) by Eve Zaremba	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
The third entry in the Helen Keremos series goes a step beyond the fine Work for a Million. Not only does Helen exceed her previous excellence as a detective, but the book has more excitement, danger, and history within its pages than the first and s ...more
May 03, 2026 04:26PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Beyond Hope by Eve Zaremba. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Beyond Hope by Eve Zaremba <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Megan rated a book really liked it Work for a Million: A Helen Keremos Mystery by Eve Zaremba	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
What a pleasant surprise this book is. After having read A Reason to Kill, I was not very disposed to read any of its sequels, but I’m very glad I finally went back and did so. The difference is so pronounced it is almost as if Zaremba spent the 8 ye ...more
May 03, 2026 04:24PM · 3 likes · like · see review
Megan rated a book liked it A Reason to Kill by Eve Zaremba	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I know that in music, a lot of people will wait until an artist's second or third album before they will buy. By that time the artist will have learned more and become more mature. I agree most of the time. The same may be true of literature. Oliver ...more
May 03, 2026 04:23PM · 2 likes · like · see review
Megan rated a book it was ok Family Secrets by Laura DeHart Young	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mysteries come in all shapes and forms. So many, in fact, that it is often hard to decide if they are actually mysteries or something else entirely—crime novels, romantic suspense, or whatever. Is there a puzzle or a mystery? Is it solved? And what i ...more
May 03, 2026 04:22PM · like · see review

Megan is now friends with Davide Borrelli

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Salt Rock Mysteries
by Magdalena Zschokke

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This is described on the front cover as “A novel with murder,” and so it is. In other words, it reads and is constructed like a typical work of literature, not a mystery. The author’s style is spare, not flowery, but it gets the job done. It’s a book This is described on the front cover as “A novel with murder,” and so it is. In other words, it reads and is constructed like a typical work of literature, not a mystery. The author’s style is spare, not flowery, but it gets the job done. It’s a book that after the first chapter or two, I assumed would eventually get a rating of about 2 stars, but the slow start is both deceptive and deliberate. The mystery and its intrigue unfold slowly, like the petals of a rose. This is a mystery for travelers and academics and those who don’t mind a good deal of foreplay before the suspenseful climax.

Professor Janet McMillan travels from home in Minnesota to Providentiales, in The Turks and Caicos Islands, to write an economic history of the island. In her quest, she finds a world of drugs, blackmail, infidelity, voodoo, murder, and a century-old scandal. Pretty heady stuff for a stuffy professor, but to make matters worse, the formerly straight professor finds herself having feelings for Michelle Sanders, a young woman from Martinique who is married to the chef of one of the resort hotels.

The author was once a sailor, so her descriptions of the Turks and Caicos Islands are lush, inviting, and reliable. Likewise her descriptions of the history of Provo and its reliance for many years on gathering and exporting salt.

Despite this idyllic setting, though, there is a different tone to this book; almost a resignation that life is not meant to be happy, that things are not meant to turn out well. On one level, yes, Provo is a beautiful paradise, but it is so underpinned with corruption that it’s not hard to see how its residents might begin to take drug running and suspicious deaths in stride and have no real hope for tranquility in their lives. In a similar manner, some of its residents, like Michelle—whose marriage outwardly seems to be an untroubled one—are having to seek out pleasure surreptitiously, living, as it were, under the surface of their real lives. Even the mysteries have to do with double lives—one secret, one normal.

There are a lot of villains in this one. Some get their comeuppance and some don’t. The important thing is that—as Janet comes to understand—there can be both change and hope. Despite a few left-out words in the text (and the fact that the author’s name is misspelled on the back cover), give this one a 3.9 and reward it by maybe reading one of the author’s other books.

Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors. ...more

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Accidental Killer (The Sarah White Mysteries #1)
by Tong Zhang (Goodreads Author)

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The digital publishing revolution began in 2009, when both Amazon and Smashwords enabled authors to publish their own books in electronic form. If these authors did their own formatting, cover design, editing, and proofreading, e-book publishing coul The digital publishing revolution began in 2009, when both Amazon and Smashwords enabled authors to publish their own books in electronic form. If these authors did their own formatting, cover design, editing, and proofreading, e-book publishing could be accomplished virtually for free. This allowed thousands of amateur authors to publish their own books without having to go through the horrible process of getting an agent or trying to get their manuscripts through the transom of a publishing house. It also allowed small specialty houses, like lesbian-oriented Bella Books, to acquire hundreds of out-or-print titles—mostly from the defunct Naiad Books—and make them available to a new generation of readers.

One of the downsides of this e-book revolution is less rigorous quality control. Without that attractive cover, and with only a friend or relative to proof or format a manuscript, a great many books of inferior quality have come into the marketplace. Unfortunately, Tong Zhang’s Accidental Killer is one of these.

Here’s a brief rundown of the plot. Sarah White is a novelist and software programmer. She is evidently dong research for a new novel when an old college friend—now a computer programmer—is murdered for his newest program. Luckily—at least for his program but maybe not for Sarah—he had given it to Sarah for safekeeping. And of course, Sarah has to go on the search for his killer and the reason behind the killing. Well, she might have saved herself the trouble. The actual killer is crippled in a car wreck and the man that hired him has an epiphany while in a fasting retreat and calls the FBI to confess. But at least Sarah gave it the old college try.

Another result of the technological revolution are peer reviews. No longer to we have to wait for the New York Times to come out to see how our favorite authors fare. In fact, venues for lesbian mysteries have always been few and far between. Now all of us can express our opinions on whatever we read—or even eat and drink. Yet even this has a downside. Untrained readers often do not seem to know the difference between very bad and very good writing. A reader’s honest opinion cannot be gainsaid, yet giving a good review to a bad book threatens to water down literature and erode the fabric of art as a whole. Here are some phrases from reviewers of Accidental Killer, for instance. “well written, well paced,” “brilliantly written,” “great,” “really great,” “terrific.” You get the picture. The same is true with ratings, two reviewers that gave the book 5 stars also said that the series “has potential” and was “promising,” descriptors that traditionally go with 3 stars, not 5.

In fact, Accidental Killer is not “well written” and it's not “great”. The best that can be said for it is that it was written at all—a to-be-envied accomplishment as I have said several times before in other reviews. But just because something is written does not mean that it should be read. Zhang and her proofreader and copyeditor don’t’ seem to have even a suspicion of what should make up a novel and how it should be crafted. It is absolutely filled with clumsy points of view, typos, jumbled scenes, stilted dialogue (“I’ll not fail you as I have given you my word,” says the killer to his boss) and a lot of showing versus telling. In addition, I suspect that English is Zhang’s second language.

Bottom line, I am being kind when I say to give this one somewhere less than 2 stars and go on to something else.

I read a review copy of this book which was kindly provided in electronic form by the publisher through Lesbrary.

Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors. ...more

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White Noise
by Eve Zaremba

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Like The Butterfly Effect this, the last book in the Helen Keremos series, is written in the third person—there are even places where it looks like it may have begun as first person but was changed at the last minute. Also like The Butterfly Effect, Like The Butterfly Effect this, the last book in the Helen Keremos series, is written in the third person—there are even places where it looks like it may have begun as first person but was changed at the last minute. Also like The Butterfly Effect, this one is far inferior to the first four. So much so, in fact, that I can’t help but suspect think that Eve Zaremba—or her publisher—paid a ghost writer to do the bulk of the writing of these two books.

I know that’s a pretty heavy thing to say, but not only has the point of view changed, but the style of writing has changed as well as most of Helen’s personality. For instance, the Helen of Beyond Hope would never say anything as juvenile as “Go home. Do not pass Go” or “Am I right or am I right?” And she would never say anything as fuddy-duddyish as “You’ve got your nerve lecturing me, Sonny Burke.” The book has a different feel altogether; an uncomfortable feel. Certainly she is less the superwoman here as elsewhere, and ordinariness just doesn’t suit her. Too, 20 years seem to have passed somewhere as Helen—about 36 in the first book—is suddenly 59. Did Zaremba forget her character’s age, or did the ghost writer just not bother to read the other novels? Heck, she even drinks Scotch now—in the first book she did not care for the stuff.

As to the plot, well, Helen gets to Vancouver at last—it only took her 6 books to get there, but she is finally home—with Julie Piper, the girlfriend she picked up in Japan. But she’s not there long before Sonny Burke—who, like Julie, is a character we first met in—you guessed it, The Butterfly Effect flies into Canada and hires Helen to help him escape from bandits unknown. Or at least he says they’re unknown. So Helen has to try to find out the truth about the men who are tailing him—and get the real truth out of Sonny as well.

If I’m going to be completely honest, the novel is set up pretty well, a couple of small incidents foreshadow bigger things to come; one group of bandits turns into another, then another—and some are not really bandits at all. All of these things help to move the book along. On the other hand, the descriptions of the islands off Vancouver are far too lengthy—even superfluous. The author or her ghost even invents a fictitious island for no apparent reason, as it is not really important to the plot. The existence of the real islands off Vancouver, however, with their small lesbian communities, will be of interest to most readers.

Oh yes, Helen finally manages to get to the bottom of things and the series comes to kind of a placid satisfying end. But without the snappy, dour, and no-nonsense Helen I came to love and respect in Work for a Million, White Noise, is disappointing indeed.

I read what seems to be the first Second Story printing of this novel.

Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors. ...more

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The Butterfly Effect (A Helen Keremos Mystery)
by Eve Zaremba

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I made the mistake of reading this book first—it was the only one in the library. But in this, the fifth offering in the Helen Keremos mystery series, the author doesn't really have much left to pad the book with. In other words, we don't really find ...more

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Uneasy Lies (A Helen Keremos Mystery)
by Eve Zaremba

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The fourth book in the Helen Keremos mystery series finds Helen back in Toronto. Her affair with Alice Caplan, who we met in Beyond Hope is getting rocky, so when another of her exes—Clare Harwood—offers her a job as temporary Head of Security in a l The fourth book in the Helen Keremos mystery series finds Helen back in Toronto. Her affair with Alice Caplan, who we met in Beyond Hope is getting rocky, so when another of her exes—Clare Harwood—offers her a job as temporary Head of Security in a luxury condo development, she jumps at the chance for a change of scenery—and some easy money. Well, maybe easy is not the proper word because one of the tenants is murdered on Helen’s first day on the job.

Turns out that the murdered man worked for an eco-organization looking into the possibility that the next phase of the development may be planned in an area that has biological waste. Was the man killed because he had found such waste, or was it something more personal, like his wife having an affair or maybe just an accident? That’s what Helen must find out, despite the fact that Detective Staff Sergeant Francis Malory (who we first met in Work for a Million) is also on the case.

Helen has turned 42 in this book and has been with Alice for several months. They got together after Alice returned from the commune in the Kootenays to pursue an acting career. Although the sex with Alice is not particularly graphic, it is at least sex—the first in a Helen Keremos novel. The truth is, though, that Helen’s relationship with Alice is not very well done—maybe a reason why Zaremba was so loathe to add a sex scene—or even a love scene—into the Keremos series. Even their dialogue is less than scintillating—a far cry from Helen’s usual snappy and tough repartee.

But except for this—and after all, one can’t really talk to one’s lover like we do to criminals, can one?—Uneasy Lies is on a level with the last two novels in the series, and the level is a high one. Helen is always one step ahead of her adversaries and manages to identify the murderer despite a ton of misinformation from almost every suspect. Like Work for a Million and A Reason to Kill, this is a whodunit in which all of the characters are prime suspects. It is also one that should be on your reading list.

I read the ebook of this novel which I downloaded on 5/28/2016. There are no chapter designations. It seems obvious that the e-book is the result of a scan of the paperback version into Word using character recognition software. It needs another read-through by either author or publisher.

Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors. ...more

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Beyond Hope (A Helen Keremos Mystery)
by Eve Zaremba

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The third entry in the Helen Keremos series goes a step beyond the fine Work for a Million. Not only does Helen exceed her previous excellence as a detective, but the book has more excitement, danger, and history within its pages than the first and s The third entry in the Helen Keremos series goes a step beyond the fine Work for a Million. Not only does Helen exceed her previous excellence as a detective, but the book has more excitement, danger, and history within its pages than the first and second novels put together.

The whole thing starts with $3,000 in cash and a request to find a woman who fled the U.S. twenty years before, after being involved a terrorist bombing. Helen’s only task is to give the woman a message from the clients. Seems standard enough fare, right? Her search takes her into a little-known area in the interior of British Columbia: the Kootenay Mountain district where three diverse cultures cautiously interact: The Dukhobors—Russian Christian emigrants—, native Americans, and “new people,” generally hippies who have fled—like Helen’s quarry—to Canada to escape punishment (or the draft) for anti-Vietnam war activities. Each section of the community plays an important role in Helen’s search.

But before she actually locates “Carol,” the assumed name of the woman she is being paid to find, she is befriended by two members of the Israeli secret police and accosted by American thugs—all of whom have their own reasons for wanting to find Carol. It seems that there is more going on in the Kootenays than Helen had suspected.

No point in going on with the plot outline, though; this is a very satisfying mystery/thriller in which Helen’s character is cemented as a no-nonsense detective with a sometimes dangerous penchant for following a case to the end. It is impossible not to like her. And it is impossible not to see the literary and historical importance of the women’s commune she locates—a farm where Carol once was forced to hide—and the solidarity of the commune’s inhabitants, who will protect each other at all costs.

As in the other Helen Keremos novels I have read, Beyond Hope is entirely self-sufficient. No characters from the previous novels show up, despite the fact that Helen and her previous client seemed to be heading for a romance at the end of Work for a Million. And for the third book in a row, Helen is fairly sexless. Although she mentions a previous romance with her friend Jessica Tsudaka—who helps her on this case—she does not have a romance, or even a flirtation, in this book. This lack of romance is a little disappointing since, after all she has done in the first three books, it seems like she deserves one. Another disappointment is the lack of backstory. In the last book there were brief glimpses into Helen’s past; she lived in the U.S. for several years with her uncle, for instance, and her mother was either a drunk, a prostitute, an addict, or maybe all three. I had hoped this would continue, but except for the brief mention of Helen’s history with Jessica, there was little reference to the past.

Still, the writing is solid, the mystery is multi-faceted, and Helen’s ability to suss out underlying motives is refreshing: “Having established to m y satisfaction that they were indeed trying to hide something I had to decide if it was worth uncovering. I had a pretty good idea what it was, of course.” And that’s where we get to one of the most interesting pars of the book. Helen solves the mystery, of course, but does she ever find the missing woman she was hired to find? She never says, but I think she does—woman’s solidarity to the end. Read the book and see if you agree. This should be rated somewhere between 4 and 4.7; good enough to get on my Top 25 list.

I read want seems to be the first 1988 Amanita printing of this novel.

Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors. ...more

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Work for a Million: A Helen Keremos Mystery
by Eve Zaremba

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What a pleasant surprise this book is. After having read A Reason to Kill, I was not very disposed to read any of its sequels, but I’m very glad I finally went back and did so. The difference is so pronounced it is almost as if Zaremba spent the 8 ye What a pleasant surprise this book is. After having read A Reason to Kill, I was not very disposed to read any of its sequels, but I’m very glad I finally went back and did so. The difference is so pronounced it is almost as if Zaremba spent the 8 years between the first and second books getting to know her main character. The Helen Keremos of A Reason to Kill was vaguely described—she was of no specific age, had kind of a teeth-gnashing personality, and one had to guess what she actually looked like. In this book, Helen’s comes into her own. She is 40 years old, sees herself as a fairly stereotypical butch dyke, and she has a razor-sharp mind with a finely tuned bullshit meter.

“Some years” after the events told in A Reason to Kill Helen is just about to leave Toronto and drive back to her home in Vancouver when she gets a summons from a big-shot lawyer named Sedgewick. He insists that Helen look into some threats that a client of his—up-and-coming singer Sonia Deerfield—has been receiving. This brings Helen into contact with the high-life and high-stakes world of pop music, including musicians, agents, publicists, and other handlers—all of whom seem to want a part of Helen, who has, incidentally, just won a million big ones in the Canadian lottery. At first, everyone seems chummy, but, as Helen notes, “a million beans is one hell of a temptation.” But if the descriptions are reminiscent of Dragnet, the mystery itself is more of an Agatha Christie whodunit, with every character eventually becoming a suspect.

There is really not much to say negatively about this book. The many characters come to life, the mystery is a well-wrought and believable one, and Helen herself is so well drawn that she makes most other lesbian private eye almost cartoonish. She is intelligent, matter-of-fact, and well spoken. Better yet—even as a first-person narrator—she never comes out with an awkward quip or self-putdown (J.M. Redmann;s Micky Knight, for instance, tells us that “I have an incurable sophomoric streak in me.”) Maybe that’s why I am so taken with Helen Keremos, and maybe that’s why there are no Private Investigators on my Top 20 list.

Well, Work for a Million might not make my Top 20 Lesbian Mystery list either, but it will be near the top of my Lesbian Private Investigators list, if I ever make one. Give this one a solid 4.

I read the 1988 second printing of the Amanita edition of this novel.

Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors. ...more

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A Reason to Kill
by Eve Zaremba

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I know that in music, a lot of people will wait until an artist's second or third album before they will buy. By that time the artist will have learned more and become more mature. I agree most of the time. The same may be true of literature. Oliver ...more

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Family Secrets
by Laura DeHart Young

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Mysteries come in all shapes and forms. So many, in fact, that it is often hard to decide if they are actually mysteries or something else entirely—crime novels, romantic suspense, or whatever. Is there a puzzle or a mystery? Is it solved? And what i Mysteries come in all shapes and forms. So many, in fact, that it is often hard to decide if they are actually mysteries or something else entirely—crime novels, romantic suspense, or whatever. Is there a puzzle or a mystery? Is it solved? And what if the protagonist is not the sleuth? That’s the case here as Meg Rhyland, successful Nantucket potter, hires a private eye to investigate a man who says he’s her long lost brother—who is claiming half of her recent inheritance. Meg doesn’t need this grief; she is opening a new store and her partner Kit is fast becoming an alcoholic. Add to that the fact that Meg wants to get a private eyeful of her detective, Susan Marks.

But let’s start at the beginning, where Young consumes much of the first 25 pages or so in backstory. It is good, compelling backstory, although it seems to take place all at once—giving us an interesting glimpse into Meg’s childhood and the history of her meeting Kit. There is nothing wrong with this set up, per se, but after all the history, things seem to go south fast.

Young is about as heavy-handed a writer as you will find. Instead of subtly introducing us to Kit’s reliance on scotch over a period of time, she hits us over the head with it again and again. Kit’s got a glass of scotch in her hand almost every time we see her after page 50 or so. And of course when Meg cautions her about it, Kit flies off the handle. And we never find out what causes Kit’s sudden alcoholism. As Mr. Knightley might say to Emma, “very poorly done.”

Her treatment of men is no better. The long-lost brother, Michael Gregory, could hardly be portrayed as more of an ogre. From his portly, disreputable appearance to his attitude, he is described much like a villain in an early Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys book. Such as, “Michael Gregory stood in the living room doorway, a callous sneer plastered across his unshaven face.” He also has “a snide laugh” and other disturbing characteristics. All the other men in the book fare just as badly. I’m as much aware of the “evil that men do” as anyone, but this kind of writing is unacceptable.

And speaking of Nancy Drew and her penchant for discovering secret hiding paces, Meg finds an important clue behind a hidden bookcase in her grandfather’s study. And Susan just happens to have a hidden hiding place of her own in a cave, a la Hardy Boys. The plot itself has a bit of excitement, but it also has holes galore. Here’s one. A criminal locks Meg and her friend Hollis up on her yacht while he rows to shore on a raft to pick up his friends. Meg easily escapes the locked room, but instead of just cruising out of danger, the two women risk their lives by swimming to shore.

The prose and copyediting of Family Secrets are professional, the backstories good, and the fact that Meg is an artist—one of the only protagonists in the lesbian mystery genre that is—give the book some panache. There are also some nice sparks between Meg and Susan, who gets her own point of view chapters late in the book. But these minor plusses do little to make up for the major gaffes and plot holes. Give it not much higher than a 2.

Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 1250 other lesbian mysteries by over 400 authors. ...more

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	The Lesbian Private Eye 4.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2020 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2020 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Lesbian Detective Novel: an annotated bibliography it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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