What do you think?
Rate this book
Amanda Valentine Mystery #3
Fair Play
Rose Beecham gives us another fast-paced police procedural; it's the third in her top-notch mystery series featuring New Zealand Detective Inspector Amanda Valentine.
First published January 1, 1995
27 people want to read
About the author
Rose Beecham
12 books16 followersRose Beecham is the mystery pen name of best-selling lesbian romance and mystery novels writer Jennifer Knight. She is the prolific author of romance and mystery novels under three pen names — Jennifer Fulton, Rose Beecham, and Grace Lennox. She was first published by the Naiad Press in 1992. Jennifer is a recipient of the Alice B. Reader's award for Lesbian Fiction, multiple Golden Crown Literary Award winner, and Lambda Literary Award finalist for both romance and mystery.
Jennifer Fulton, Rose Beecham, Grace Lennox
Jennifer Fulton, Rose Beecham, Grace Lennox
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 3, 2018
More than twenty years old and long out-of-print, it's still well worth revisiting Kiwi author Rose Beecham's trilogy of books featuring American-Kiwi detective Amanda Valentine.
Set in the New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, during the early 1990s, these books were part of a groundbreaking wave that saw female detectives and LGBT characters begin to elbow more into lead roles in crime fiction, and contained some elements that were considered controversial at the time, even if they were pitched as 'lighter' mysteries.
Beecham included not only lesbian and gay characters in her stories, but sex workers and transgender characters, in each case portrayed with some compassion and nuance rather than just as caricatures. Each book has a range of such characters, in a variety of roles, not just a token one here or there.
In FAIR PLAY, Valentine is faced with a couple of tricky cases. First, there's a high-profile trans-Tasman murder inquiry, when Bryce Petty, the head of a gay and lesbian broadcaster in Australia, turns up dead in Wellington, months after he vanished under a cloud. Valentine has to juggle investigations in Melbourne and Wellington, and colleagues on both sides of the marine border. At the same time, a problematic junior colleague in Wellington has brought her a tricky local case that's entwined with some in the local lesbian community. Valentine herself is a closeted lesbian, now in an ongoing, if on-off and open, relationship with a famous newsreader who's currently in Rwanda.
So there are plenty of complications for Detective Inspector Amanda Valentine, both professionally and personally, as the stories in FAIR PLAY unfold. I enjoyed the read. Beecham tells a good story, and I think it largely holds up even after so much time has passed. It can read a little 'light' in tone, maybe dated in parts (not heavily, just a shade) - or perhaps a better description is 'of its time'.
It's interesting to reflect on the latter, and realise how much things have changed - in some ways, at least a bit - in twenty years. I'm not really the target audience for FAIR PLAY, which was one of many books brought out by specialist publishers like Naiad and Silver Moon to cater for an LGBT audience who were looking for romance and mystery stories featuring interesting LGBT characters. But even so, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and the entire Amanda Valentine trilogy. I didn't find anything off-putting about the romantic elements or the portrayal of various characters and issues.
It's easy to forget that attitudes weren't the same twenty years ago. FAIR PLAY was even 'banned' in Canada at the time, having been deemed by border officials to contain 'obscene material' - the book along with others became part of a legal battle fought by a Vancouver bookshop, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, against Canadian customs preemptively deciding such gay and lesbian literature was obscene and couldn't be imported and shipped to specialist stores like Little Sister's.
It's startling to think of the different attitudes in even 'liberal' countries like Canada, only a couple of decades ago. While being glad that things seem to have improved, at least a bit. And a reminder to contemporary readers that characters and issues we read about now which may not seem particularly controversial to us may have been groundbreaking back then - and very brave of authors to tackle.
I understand that even the author herself sees her Amanda Valentine trilogy as somewhat 'lightweight' when it came to the mystery and crime elements, corralled by the requirements of her publishers, and I've seen from other critics that they rate her later US-set Judy Devine series as stronger crime reads. I'll definitely have to dig those out too, but for me, I enjoyed travelling back to Wellington in the 1990s and riding alongside Detective Valentine as she sought to solve cases while dealing with the misogyny and discrimination that was even more rife and blatant throughout society back then.
Set in the New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, during the early 1990s, these books were part of a groundbreaking wave that saw female detectives and LGBT characters begin to elbow more into lead roles in crime fiction, and contained some elements that were considered controversial at the time, even if they were pitched as 'lighter' mysteries.
Beecham included not only lesbian and gay characters in her stories, but sex workers and transgender characters, in each case portrayed with some compassion and nuance rather than just as caricatures. Each book has a range of such characters, in a variety of roles, not just a token one here or there.
In FAIR PLAY, Valentine is faced with a couple of tricky cases. First, there's a high-profile trans-Tasman murder inquiry, when Bryce Petty, the head of a gay and lesbian broadcaster in Australia, turns up dead in Wellington, months after he vanished under a cloud. Valentine has to juggle investigations in Melbourne and Wellington, and colleagues on both sides of the marine border. At the same time, a problematic junior colleague in Wellington has brought her a tricky local case that's entwined with some in the local lesbian community. Valentine herself is a closeted lesbian, now in an ongoing, if on-off and open, relationship with a famous newsreader who's currently in Rwanda.
So there are plenty of complications for Detective Inspector Amanda Valentine, both professionally and personally, as the stories in FAIR PLAY unfold. I enjoyed the read. Beecham tells a good story, and I think it largely holds up even after so much time has passed. It can read a little 'light' in tone, maybe dated in parts (not heavily, just a shade) - or perhaps a better description is 'of its time'.
It's interesting to reflect on the latter, and realise how much things have changed - in some ways, at least a bit - in twenty years. I'm not really the target audience for FAIR PLAY, which was one of many books brought out by specialist publishers like Naiad and Silver Moon to cater for an LGBT audience who were looking for romance and mystery stories featuring interesting LGBT characters. But even so, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and the entire Amanda Valentine trilogy. I didn't find anything off-putting about the romantic elements or the portrayal of various characters and issues.
It's easy to forget that attitudes weren't the same twenty years ago. FAIR PLAY was even 'banned' in Canada at the time, having been deemed by border officials to contain 'obscene material' - the book along with others became part of a legal battle fought by a Vancouver bookshop, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, against Canadian customs preemptively deciding such gay and lesbian literature was obscene and couldn't be imported and shipped to specialist stores like Little Sister's.
It's startling to think of the different attitudes in even 'liberal' countries like Canada, only a couple of decades ago. While being glad that things seem to have improved, at least a bit. And a reminder to contemporary readers that characters and issues we read about now which may not seem particularly controversial to us may have been groundbreaking back then - and very brave of authors to tackle.
I understand that even the author herself sees her Amanda Valentine trilogy as somewhat 'lightweight' when it came to the mystery and crime elements, corralled by the requirements of her publishers, and I've seen from other critics that they rate her later US-set Judy Devine series as stronger crime reads. I'll definitely have to dig those out too, but for me, I enjoyed travelling back to Wellington in the 1990s and riding alongside Detective Valentine as she sought to solve cases while dealing with the misogyny and discrimination that was even more rife and blatant throughout society back then.
January 31, 2021
Completely befuddled by how the romantic sub-plot was handled in ths trilogy. Amanda gets together with a tabloid-like talk show presenter. She's very distrustful at first but has fallen completely in lust. Amanda is indepedent and doesn't like people encroaching on her territory unabashed so she is rightfully shocked when her lover gets super wifey and domestic since day 1. They fake-break up, then open relationship, and Amanda drowns in depressive pining for two novels, moaning about how good she had it with her lover because they had a quick-and-easy thing with no melodrama attached. Like???? Your lover started to redecorate literally the morning after you two first had sex????? She was *this* close from going down her knee and ask for your hand in marriage? Did we read the same first novel?
I truly can't stand all the random facts that are mentioned but dropped. Is economy of writing not a thing anymore? I thought stuffing a story with whatever passes your mind was acceptable only in fanfiction. Even if it's just for the sake of social criticism, like mentioning that the French have resumed nuclear testing in the South Pacific, you need to tie this with the plot. Make it part of a motive, make it that the criminal invested something in what you mentioned before, make it part of a corruption or spy plot, make it part of the characterization of the protagonist. Like in Book 1, Amanda mentioned that she doesn't buy French products because of the nuclear testing. Okay good, that means she is conscentious, keeps herself updated on sociopolitical events, does her own little every day activism, love it! But don't bring it back if you don't do anything else with this information. Don't give me irrelevant information at the beginning of in a mystery novel, when I'm trying to absorb as much as I can because who knows when it's gonna be useful to unravel the puzzle. This is mystery fiction, everything needs to be tightly knit. Either it pertains to plot or to characterization.
I admit I liked the cheekiness of not revealing whether a camp colleague of Amanda is gay or not. I was waiting for that but it was merely bait.
I loved how the author had the courage to deal with a rape case where the perpetrator is a lesbian, it's not easy to look your own community in the face and point out the rotten apples. Especially if your community is a discriminated minority and has suffered enough. But I was let down by the fact that this sub-plot doesn't have an ending. At least give us a newspaper slip with the result of the trial, what the hell.
This is the only novel in the trilogy where there are two investigative cases that are both carried out during the narration. Although one of them is incomplete, it's better than the joke played on the reader in Book 1 and 2.
Once again, kudos to the author for how she handled queerness, alcoholism, suicide, rape and rape culture, homophobia and sexism.
I truly can't stand all the random facts that are mentioned but dropped. Is economy of writing not a thing anymore? I thought stuffing a story with whatever passes your mind was acceptable only in fanfiction. Even if it's just for the sake of social criticism, like mentioning that the French have resumed nuclear testing in the South Pacific, you need to tie this with the plot. Make it part of a motive, make it that the criminal invested something in what you mentioned before, make it part of a corruption or spy plot, make it part of the characterization of the protagonist. Like in Book 1, Amanda mentioned that she doesn't buy French products because of the nuclear testing. Okay good, that means she is conscentious, keeps herself updated on sociopolitical events, does her own little every day activism, love it! But don't bring it back if you don't do anything else with this information. Don't give me irrelevant information at the beginning of in a mystery novel, when I'm trying to absorb as much as I can because who knows when it's gonna be useful to unravel the puzzle. This is mystery fiction, everything needs to be tightly knit. Either it pertains to plot or to characterization.
I admit I liked the cheekiness of not revealing whether a camp colleague of Amanda is gay or not. I was waiting for that but it was merely bait.
I loved how the author had the courage to deal with a rape case where the perpetrator is a lesbian, it's not easy to look your own community in the face and point out the rotten apples. Especially if your community is a discriminated minority and has suffered enough. But I was let down by the fact that this sub-plot doesn't have an ending. At least give us a newspaper slip with the result of the trial, what the hell.
This is the only novel in the trilogy where there are two investigative cases that are both carried out during the narration. Although one of them is incomplete, it's better than the joke played on the reader in Book 1 and 2.
Once again, kudos to the author for how she handled queerness, alcoholism, suicide, rape and rape culture, homophobia and sexism.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews