Beneath the Blonde

Saz Martin #3

by Stella Duffy

Siobhan Forrester, lead singer of Beneath the Blonde, has everything a girl could want - stunning body, great voice, brilliant career, loving boyfriend. Now she has a stalker too. She can cope with the midnight flower deliveries and nasty phone calls, but things really turn sour when intimidation turns to murder. Saz Martin, hired to seek out the stalker and protect Siobhan, embarks on a whirlwind investigation, travelling with the band from London to New Zealand with plenty of stop-overs. As jobs go, this one shouldn't be too hard, except Siobhan is economic with the truth and Saz isn't sure she wants to keep the relationship strictly business.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Queer, Mystery, Lesbian, LGBT, Lesbian Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1997

About the author

Stella Duffy was born in London and grew up in New Zealand. She has lived and worked in London since the mid-1980s. She has written seventeen novels, over seventy short stories, and devised and/or written fourteen plays. The Room of Lost Things and State of Happiness were both longlisted for the Orange Prize, and she has twice won Stonewall Writer of the Year. She has twice won the CWA Short Story Dagger. Stella is the co-founder of the Fun Palaces campaign for cultural democracy. Her latest novel is Lullaby Beach (Virago).
She is also a yoga teacher, teaching workshops in yoga for writing, and a trainee Existential Psychotherapist, her ongoing doctoral research is in the embodied experience of being postmenopausal.

Reviews

[Cloud · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I took a short every time a lesbian detective fiction protagonist cheated on their girlfriends I'd be an alcoholic right now.
Is this something innate in people who were young in the 60s? They got so much sex out of that decade that now they can't go one night without it?
Are lesbians my age like Saz? Just slobbering all over any nice-looking woman with a functioning [censored] so they cheat on the their lovers with her?
I embarked on a journey to read as much lesbian detective fiction to know a genre that shaped lesbian literature, but the more I read stories of infidelity the more I wanna abandon the project.

[Dane Divine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this years ago when I was a little baby-dyke and it was so relieving and refreshing to read something queer. I didn't know about good or bad writing then, I just loved the story. I didn't even know about Aotearoa then, I had to look it up! But I've just re-read the first chapter (on Google books!) and can see New Zealand in it as bright as day.

[Jessi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would be five stars except for the low key transphobia that crops up at the end via Saz. Siobhan is a sweet ally though and that cheered me a little.
Definitely a well crafted story that kept me on the edge of my seat.

[Josie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Mary Crotty · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting

[Sarah H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finished beneath the blonde today while my clients were working out at the YMCA. I started to work out but got told to stop cuz I was wearing blue jeans. Oh-well and I just ate a cookie. Stella Duffy is a Lesbian and I mean like old skool Lesbian- Crime writer from London.(I doubt her name is really Stella Duffy). You can read her books in one sitting or if you're me, three. It's easy reading people. The chapters are at most 3 pgs long. Beneath the Blonde is about a band that has a stalker. You know, it's like a really bad TV programme but i love it!

[Lorna Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stella Duffy was recommended in the canvas magazine in the NZ herald. I grabbed the first book I could find knowing nothing about the author. I didn't intentionally seek a lesbian thriller, but I did enjoy it. The settings, therefore the language was familiar to me, and I enjoyed the unfolding plot

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first Saz Martin book, and it was a good pulpy read. Kind of lesbian exploitational fun: think Bound or Naked Killer. It's no Room of Lost Things -- the only other Duffy I've read so far -- but it was at least a decent tale.

[Pam]

12/03 purchased from serpentstail

[Bel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am enjoying these books more and more in spite of myself. Rather throwaway writing but some great plotting and a really good mystery in this one. Perfect light reading.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good thriller, read in 2005 or 2006 sometime.
Read for a second time, finishing it 13/03/16.
The writer annoyed me quite a bit.

[Carol Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked Duffy's non-mystery novels, but her habit of cutting back and forth between her sleuth and the interior monologue of the criminal she is pursuing just doesn't work for me. Alas.

[Alena]

Can't get into it at all, stopping about halfway through.

It's not the writing but the story.