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Loretta Lawson #1
A Masculine Ending
Loretta Lawson, English professor at London University, is annoyed when she discovers a sleeping stranger in the supposedly empty Paris flat she has borrowed. When she returns from a feminist literary conference to find the stranger gone but his bed sheets bloody, Loretta doesn't need an encyclopedia to figure out her mysterious roommate has been murdered.
With urgent business calling her home, Loretta heads back for the start of the term with one precious clue -- a book that must have belonged to the victim -- and more than an academic interest in discovering exactly what happened to a corpse with a penchant for literary criticism.
"A charming combination of sophistication, wit and unpretentious learning." -- The Washington Post Book World
With urgent business calling her home, Loretta heads back for the start of the term with one precious clue -- a book that must have belonged to the victim -- and more than an academic interest in discovering exactly what happened to a corpse with a penchant for literary criticism.
"A charming combination of sophistication, wit and unpretentious learning." -- The Washington Post Book World
214 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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99 people want to read
About the author
Joan Smith
19 books39 followersJoan Alison Smith is an English novelist, journalist and human rights activist, who is a former chair of the Writers in Prison committee in the English section of International PEN. In 2003 she was offered the MBE for her services to PEN, but refused the award. Joan Smith is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
June 23, 2013
Loretta Lawson is the protagonist of this first novel in a series of five books published in Britain between 1987 and 1995. Lawson lectures in English at London University. She is also a strong feminist according to the book jacket. That was my major attraction to the book. I have been looking for feminist private investigators. At that time I had only found one: V.I. Warshawski the product of Sara Paretsky. So I was quite excited about this new discovery. Although Loretta is not actually a P.I. she acts as one in the series, fitting it around her teaching job.
The author of A Masculine Ending Joan Smith is a radical feminist. I read one of her non-fiction feminist books Misogynies: Reflections on Myths and Malice and draw my conclusion from that. The information in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Smith corroborates that conclusion. That moniker of “radical” gives her extra points as far as I am concerned. And it gives me hope that Loretta Lawson follows a similar path.
The book takes place somewhere between 1983 and 1985. It opens with Loretta going to a feminist conference to give a speech. She arrives in Paris from London two hours late and hungry due to train delays and misinformation about a dining car. She has two additional adventures that evening. First, she goes to a restaurant to have a late dinner and instead of dinner she has a verbal altercation with a boorish man who is determined to join her. Then, once she finds the borrowed apartment where she is staying, she discovers an unknown person sleeping in the second bedroom. What to do? After some mental weighing the options, she goes to sleep in the second bedroom not disturbing the other person.
After that intense first evening in Paris, she gets up in the morning and goes to her conference without any contact with the other person. When she returns that evening to the apartment that person is no longer there but the bedding is quite bloody. Reviewing her options, she decides to go back to London and not call the police. After all, what else would any lecturer in English do?
That seems like plenty of excitement for the first chapter. Loretta seems to make one inexplicably bad decision after another once she gets to the borrowed flat. She hardly seems to be a likely character to solve an apparent murder.
She finds an advance copy of an obscure book in the apartment: The Resurrection of Little Nell: A Challenge to the Authority of Charles Dickens about deconstruction and post-structuralism. You don’t need to understand these concepts to enjoy the story. Believe me! And for those of you who are wondering, GR search never heard of this book.
Through some private eyeing she finds there were only nine advance copies and wants to track down who got those copies to possibly find a link to the mysterious person in the bedroom.
On a scale of one to ten with one being not at all likely and ten being very likely, what is the likelihood that anything like the events of the book could happen? I’d have to give it a two, a three at a gullible moment! There are too many unlikely occurrences. I am not an experienced mystery reader so maybe this is the level of fiction that you must accept in mysteries. But, for me, an inexperienced mystery reader, there is too much suspension of disbelief required here at the very beginning of the book. This is irrelevant if you seek more entertainment than believability. I am reading this for entertainment and to see how a feminist author portrays a feminist character.
It is obvious that author Joan Smith wants us to understand that Loretta is a feminist. She is a participant in “feminist literary criticism”; is determined not to be viewed as “faint-hearted and feminine”; has come to the belief that, “for women, marriage was at best an irrelevance and at worst a shackle”; believes that if you interview three men, you should interview three women; and, puts a strong emphasis on “Ms.”
Rapidly slipping down the slope of incredulity, even Loretta acknowledges her doubts about how to proceed.
Is it wise? Shall we all say “NO!” in one loud chorus? But then what kind of a mystery would this be? She really is required, even as a feminist, to keep wading waist deep in the big muddy. (Sorry, Pete Seeger.)
A small feminist item in the book is a reference to Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. This would have been happening during the time of the book, the early to mid 1980s. A woman in the book mentions she had been arrested there for blocking a road. Joan smith was in her late 20s when Greenham Common started. As a feminist activist, she likely participated in events in the Women’s Peace Camp. This was definitely a “can do” exercise for women in that era. Other women’s peace camps sprung up internationally including the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Seneca Falls, NY.
Just to be clear about what I mean when I say radical feminism:
I am sure these feminists are the ones who tend to use the spelling ‘womyn’ and ‘herstory’ maybe even ‘queer’ instead of lesbian. However, early in the book pains are taken to let us know that Loretta is not a lesbian. There are significant references to gay men in the closet. I don’t think that was a subject that Agatha Christy explored in her mysteries. However, there are significant examples of friction between men and womyn in the story.
I am not sure what Joan Smith or Loretta Lawson would thing of that definition. There is plenty of evidence in the book about disharmony between men and women.
After the first third of the book, it settles down into a real mystery. And the end really does surprise me! Remember that I am not an experienced mystery reader and I don’t try to see how soon I can figure out who-done-it. Wouldn’t that spoil the book to know the end before you get there?
They way our protagonist lecturer managed to get herself into being a murder investigator is explained, not too satisfactorily as I have mentioned about one unlikely event after another.
I don’t find that paragraph explanation very compelling. Especially if there are four more books in the series with Loretta Lawson being an accidental murder investigator. I already have the second book so I guess I will find out some day.
It was interesting to read a book with a feminist protagonist but I was not impressed with how it was done. Most of the things that focused on feminism were early in the book. Most of the time it was just a woman who had some moxie to handle things her way and participated in a feminist magazine collective. Remembering that this book was published over 25 years ago, it seems likely that the threshold to be labeled feminist would have been much lower then. In 1987 this aspect of the book likely seemed much braver. Seemed a little tepid for 2013.
Unless you go out of your way to find it, you will not stumble upon this book in a library or even a used book store. I found it because I looked online for books by this author. It is a short book that was worth 99 cents. I’m giving this book and extra half star for its effort to be feminist. But, for me, that only puts the book at 3½ stars and I don’t think the book deserves to be rounded up due to any special writing skill exhibited. Three stars.
The author of A Masculine Ending Joan Smith is a radical feminist. I read one of her non-fiction feminist books Misogynies: Reflections on Myths and Malice and draw my conclusion from that. The information in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Smith corroborates that conclusion. That moniker of “radical” gives her extra points as far as I am concerned. And it gives me hope that Loretta Lawson follows a similar path.
The book takes place somewhere between 1983 and 1985. It opens with Loretta going to a feminist conference to give a speech. She arrives in Paris from London two hours late and hungry due to train delays and misinformation about a dining car. She has two additional adventures that evening. First, she goes to a restaurant to have a late dinner and instead of dinner she has a verbal altercation with a boorish man who is determined to join her. Then, once she finds the borrowed apartment where she is staying, she discovers an unknown person sleeping in the second bedroom. What to do? After some mental weighing the options, she goes to sleep in the second bedroom not disturbing the other person.
After that intense first evening in Paris, she gets up in the morning and goes to her conference without any contact with the other person. When she returns that evening to the apartment that person is no longer there but the bedding is quite bloody. Reviewing her options, she decides to go back to London and not call the police. After all, what else would any lecturer in English do?
That seems like plenty of excitement for the first chapter. Loretta seems to make one inexplicably bad decision after another once she gets to the borrowed flat. She hardly seems to be a likely character to solve an apparent murder.
She finds an advance copy of an obscure book in the apartment: The Resurrection of Little Nell: A Challenge to the Authority of Charles Dickens about deconstruction and post-structuralism. You don’t need to understand these concepts to enjoy the story. Believe me! And for those of you who are wondering, GR search never heard of this book.
Through some private eyeing she finds there were only nine advance copies and wants to track down who got those copies to possibly find a link to the mysterious person in the bedroom.
On a scale of one to ten with one being not at all likely and ten being very likely, what is the likelihood that anything like the events of the book could happen? I’d have to give it a two, a three at a gullible moment! There are too many unlikely occurrences. I am not an experienced mystery reader so maybe this is the level of fiction that you must accept in mysteries. But, for me, an inexperienced mystery reader, there is too much suspension of disbelief required here at the very beginning of the book. This is irrelevant if you seek more entertainment than believability. I am reading this for entertainment and to see how a feminist author portrays a feminist character.
It is obvious that author Joan Smith wants us to understand that Loretta is a feminist. She is a participant in “feminist literary criticism”; is determined not to be viewed as “faint-hearted and feminine”; has come to the belief that, “for women, marriage was at best an irrelevance and at worst a shackle”; believes that if you interview three men, you should interview three women; and, puts a strong emphasis on “Ms.”
Rapidly slipping down the slope of incredulity, even Loretta acknowledges her doubts about how to proceed.
Loretta wasn’t so sure. Her trip to Paris had already involved her in an unsolved crime, very possibly murder, not to mention withholding evidence from the police. Was it really wise to risk adding burglary to the list?
Is it wise? Shall we all say “NO!” in one loud chorus? But then what kind of a mystery would this be? She really is required, even as a feminist, to keep wading waist deep in the big muddy. (Sorry, Pete Seeger.)
A small feminist item in the book is a reference to Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. This would have been happening during the time of the book, the early to mid 1980s. A woman in the book mentions she had been arrested there for blocking a road. Joan smith was in her late 20s when Greenham Common started. As a feminist activist, she likely participated in events in the Women’s Peace Camp. This was definitely a “can do” exercise for women in that era. Other women’s peace camps sprung up internationally including the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Seneca Falls, NY.
Just to be clear about what I mean when I say radical feminism:
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism . . . that focuses on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power that organizes society into a complex of relationships based on the assertion that male supremacy oppresses women. Radical feminism aims to challenge and overthrow patriarchy by opposing standard gender roles and oppression of women and calls for a radical reordering of society.
Radical feminists locate the root cause of women's oppression in patriarchal gender relations, as opposed to legal systems (as in liberal feminism) or class conflict (as in socialist feminism and Marxist feminism.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_...
I am sure these feminists are the ones who tend to use the spelling ‘womyn’ and ‘herstory’ maybe even ‘queer’ instead of lesbian. However, early in the book pains are taken to let us know that Loretta is not a lesbian. There are significant references to gay men in the closet. I don’t think that was a subject that Agatha Christy explored in her mysteries. However, there are significant examples of friction between men and womyn in the story.
I am not sure what Joan Smith or Loretta Lawson would thing of that definition. There is plenty of evidence in the book about disharmony between men and women.
After the first third of the book, it settles down into a real mystery. And the end really does surprise me! Remember that I am not an experienced mystery reader and I don’t try to see how soon I can figure out who-done-it. Wouldn’t that spoil the book to know the end before you get there?
They way our protagonist lecturer managed to get herself into being a murder investigator is explained, not too satisfactorily as I have mentioned about one unlikely event after another.
And why had she set out to find the murderer? She had never r;eally examined her motives. She supposed it had almost come about by accident . . . in the first place, she hadn’t been sure enough to go to the police – and she had had a pressing reason for going back to England in the shape of her mother’s hysterectomy. Then the evidence had disappeared. By the time the body was discovered, she had been too afraid for her own skin to go to the police. It wasn’t a sense of justice that had involved her in the investigation, it was straightforward guilt.
I don’t find that paragraph explanation very compelling. Especially if there are four more books in the series with Loretta Lawson being an accidental murder investigator. I already have the second book so I guess I will find out some day.
It was interesting to read a book with a feminist protagonist but I was not impressed with how it was done. Most of the things that focused on feminism were early in the book. Most of the time it was just a woman who had some moxie to handle things her way and participated in a feminist magazine collective. Remembering that this book was published over 25 years ago, it seems likely that the threshold to be labeled feminist would have been much lower then. In 1987 this aspect of the book likely seemed much braver. Seemed a little tepid for 2013.
Unless you go out of your way to find it, you will not stumble upon this book in a library or even a used book store. I found it because I looked online for books by this author. It is a short book that was worth 99 cents. I’m giving this book and extra half star for its effort to be feminist. But, for me, that only puts the book at 3½ stars and I don’t think the book deserves to be rounded up due to any special writing skill exhibited. Three stars.
February 28, 2013
Joan Smith, a British journalist, activist and novelist, introduces Loretta Lawson, a feminist academic, in A Masculine Ending Dr. Lawson uses the Paris flat of a fellow London University professor while she's in the city for a feminist conference. While there, Dr. Lawson comes to believe that an unknown man has been murdered in that very flat.
I don't want to give to much away by explaining why, but Dr. Lawson cannot go to the French police with her rather wispy suspicions. Instead, aided by her estranged husband, a journalist, and her best friend, a female professor at Oxford University, Dr. Lawson begins to investigate who the unknown man might have been and whether he has, indeed, become the victim of foul play.
The mystery won't be resolved until the last dozen pages -- and I never had the tiniest inkling of the perpetrator. Smith's clever handling of the mystery and her creation of the eminently sensible and likeable Loretta Lawson led me to immediately order Why Aren't They Screaming? so that I can follow the further adventures of Dr. Loretta Lawson.
My only gripe is that Smith only wrote five Lawson mysteries. As the last Lawson novel was released in 1995 and Smith now devotes so much of her time to PEN International, I doubt she will oblige her fans by penning any more. Ah, c'est la vie! We must take the bitter with the sweet, and, with A Masculine Ending, Smith has introduced an amateur sleuth who delivers a very sweet read indeed.
I don't want to give to much away by explaining why, but Dr. Lawson cannot go to the French police with her rather wispy suspicions. Instead, aided by her estranged husband, a journalist, and her best friend, a female professor at Oxford University, Dr. Lawson begins to investigate who the unknown man might have been and whether he has, indeed, become the victim of foul play.
The mystery won't be resolved until the last dozen pages -- and I never had the tiniest inkling of the perpetrator. Smith's clever handling of the mystery and her creation of the eminently sensible and likeable Loretta Lawson led me to immediately order Why Aren't They Screaming? so that I can follow the further adventures of Dr. Loretta Lawson.
My only gripe is that Smith only wrote five Lawson mysteries. As the last Lawson novel was released in 1995 and Smith now devotes so much of her time to PEN International, I doubt she will oblige her fans by penning any more. Ah, c'est la vie! We must take the bitter with the sweet, and, with A Masculine Ending, Smith has introduced an amateur sleuth who delivers a very sweet read indeed.
Read
January 19, 2011I enjoyed this quite a bit the first time I read it, which would have been 10-20 years ago. It is still not a bad read, but hasn't aged as well as it might have. Part of the fun of it the first time around was that it featured a feminist professor of literature as the inadvertent sleuth, and while back then I knew nothing of structuralism or deconstruction, I knew a reasonable amount about feminist theory. In 2011, it has some charm as a period piece (and perhaps will acquire more in future decades), but Loretta's reactions to things often strike me as immature--that in her dealings with her (estranged but friendly) husband, for instance, she continually feels he's self-centered when in fact he's simply interested in his job and enjoys being a reporter. Furthermore, the male characters' distaste for feminism, whether they are actively misogynist or in most respects fair-minded, makes the novel feel as though it must have been written at least ten years (perhaps more) before it was published. Men I knew in the late 1980s were not necessarily deeply interested in feminism, but in general they were not visibly alarmed by it and I think they believed it was something normal for women to care about. Was the San Francisco area simply ahead of Oxford and London?
November 5, 2023
I first read this in 1988. I bought it from a book shop that sold mainly feminist books, Virago Modern Classics, The Women's Press, Pandora Women Crime Writers. ( It was called "In Other Words" and was in Mutley Plain, Plymouth).
With this book I remember that I enjoyed all the references to Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, The Brontes, Anita Brookner and Sophie's Choice.
On rereading this now, I found it very dated and didn't enjoy the writing style or even the plot but it was fascinating to read about writing a cheque to pay a parking fine, making calls from phone boxes, waiting for BT engineers to fix the phone at home, aerials on cars for the radio, no coffee shops. There was a lot of hard drinking during the day at pubs - brandy, whisky. And nobody cooked, they ate out all the time but not fancy.
I might read the others in the series.
With this book I remember that I enjoyed all the references to Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, The Brontes, Anita Brookner and Sophie's Choice.
On rereading this now, I found it very dated and didn't enjoy the writing style or even the plot but it was fascinating to read about writing a cheque to pay a parking fine, making calls from phone boxes, waiting for BT engineers to fix the phone at home, aerials on cars for the radio, no coffee shops. There was a lot of hard drinking during the day at pubs - brandy, whisky. And nobody cooked, they ate out all the time but not fancy.
I might read the others in the series.
January 6, 2014
The blurb on the back of this book says it is "a charming combination of sophistication, wit and unpretentious learning." I'll give them the sophistication but otherwise.... hrm. I really wanted to like this book. I like the idea of the lead character, the setting is cool and I loved the idea of the strong feminist slant. She was an academic and compared to many other academic sleuths, she was modern and, I suppose, unpretentious. At least in outward presentation. But some of the critiques of literature constantly inserted, as well as things like having her love the french film but having her less "evolved" husband dislike it, having her name drop foreign cuisine constantly, her love of opera but oh look! she listens to Grace Jones too isn't she cool, and other little details just all felt very self-conscious, affected and, well, pretentious. Maybe it was a new mode of being at the time, but she just feels like the cliche "cool" "disaffected" academic now. And Loretta, the protag, was, frankly, a bitch. Not in any way funny, acidic or root-for-her but in a simply annoying way. She constantly bemoans the fact the her ex and her best friend are so selfish because they are more interested in their own work than being her sidekick. Then she bitches out her best friend for an innocent matchmaking. She decides she's gonna send her a postcard to say sorry but never does. I know it's the 80s so before email and everything, but a postcard? Come on, girl. The wit was absent for me generally, and when I did detect it it felt like what would be described as wit amongst a bunch of Classic professors who were chortling over a misplaced Latin prefix or something. Condescending and, well, back to pretentious. One moment struck me particularly. Throughout the book she constantly teases out people's unsaid or unconscious sexism. That was fine (if a little belabored at times). Then she goes to a party and surveys the room, and amongst all the other students - whom she refers to as "young men" or "young women" - there is a student, revealed to be the same age as the rest, whom she refers to as "a black boy." It stuck with me because the protag (and by proxy the writer) spends the book detailing how evolved she is with gender and sexuality, even going on, more than once, about the "Miss" versus "Ms." debate, and yet seems totally unaware of her own subtle prejudice. Ironic. And since she took a disdainful outlook on deconstructionism, I feel I can make that parallel without worry. I can deal with a flawed or unlikeable narrator if they own it, but we're clearly supposed to feel a deep sympathy for Loretta, and I simply didn't. The setting was vivid and the writing strong, but there was just no spark. More than once I felt like saying, Just get it solved and done. The ending was ethically ambiguous and I really appreciated that a lot. Almost enough to consider reading the next book. But probably not.
December 15, 2021
I have many feelings about this book!
1. Obviously my feelings are hurt by Loretta's hatred of deconstruction, and my brain is bemused by Joan Smith insisting that there are no feminist deconstructionists (um GAYATRI SPIVAK my friend not to mention HELENE CIXOUS and JULIA KRISTEVA who you would think you would know about if you ran a feminist journal that took contributions in both English and French)
2. As in my review of the second book in the series, I just really enjoy inhabiting this world. It's familiar and there's something pleasurable about being in the world as seen by a feminist academic.
3. Because Joan Smith has a real eye for detail, the domestic, the trivial, and the day-to-day of Loretta's life, but isn't setting out to Represent A Specific Moment In History, this book is like... the concentrated essence of the 1980s. It was like time travel! Departmental secretaries! First-year students coming to your office to sign up for your seminar on Virginia Woolf and being given paper reading lists! ALL TWELVE OF THEM, ALL TWELVE OF THE STUDENTS IN YOUR FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR ON VIRGINIA WOOLF, BEING HANDED THE PAPER READING LISTS ON THE FIRST DAY OF TERM, IN YOUR OFFICE. Phone boxes! Finding advertisements for cheap flights to Paris in Time Out! Going to the library to get press cuttings on specific individuals, and finding their addresses in Who's Who! WHO'S WHO! An enormous paper book giving the names, addresses, family details, brief education/career details, and hobbies, of all the rich people in England! How much I took for granted that that was a thing that existed, and how strange it seems now.
4.
1. Obviously my feelings are hurt by Loretta's hatred of deconstruction, and my brain is bemused by Joan Smith insisting that there are no feminist deconstructionists (um GAYATRI SPIVAK my friend not to mention HELENE CIXOUS and JULIA KRISTEVA who you would think you would know about if you ran a feminist journal that took contributions in both English and French)
2. As in my review of the second book in the series, I just really enjoy inhabiting this world. It's familiar and there's something pleasurable about being in the world as seen by a feminist academic.
3. Because Joan Smith has a real eye for detail, the domestic, the trivial, and the day-to-day of Loretta's life, but isn't setting out to Represent A Specific Moment In History, this book is like... the concentrated essence of the 1980s. It was like time travel! Departmental secretaries! First-year students coming to your office to sign up for your seminar on Virginia Woolf and being given paper reading lists! ALL TWELVE OF THEM, ALL TWELVE OF THE STUDENTS IN YOUR FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR ON VIRGINIA WOOLF, BEING HANDED THE PAPER READING LISTS ON THE FIRST DAY OF TERM, IN YOUR OFFICE. Phone boxes! Finding advertisements for cheap flights to Paris in Time Out! Going to the library to get press cuttings on specific individuals, and finding their addresses in Who's Who! WHO'S WHO! An enormous paper book giving the names, addresses, family details, brief education/career details, and hobbies, of all the rich people in England! How much I took for granted that that was a thing that existed, and how strange it seems now.
4.
February 23, 2024
I follow a website called “5 Books” in which authors choose five books in a genre that they love. One of the articles I read was from a mystery author and this was one of her five choices. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as much for the discussions of her work in the English Department and her thoughts on literary theories in the late 80s, specifically post-structuralism. It was amusing to read. I could so relate. She was an academic and self-described radical feminist. Seeing that perspective was wonderful. Very much enjoyed this book.
April 11, 2022
Honestly the most boring murder mystery I have ever read. Its written in that soft, feminine voice that was popular in 20th century female writings. The author kept discovering just little things, never actually managed to solve it, and then got everything revealed to them at the very end at the same time as the reader. Its like the author didn't know who the killer was until 15 pages before the end and then just went back and slipped a couple of things in to make it all make sense.
September 14, 2017
Brain candy mystery and a quick read. The heroine is a little reminiscent of Amanda Cross's Kate Fansler--only younger, British, and less literary. I figured out whodunit a tad too early, although I didn't guess whydunit details. I like the ending.
August 18, 2025
This was pretty good, especially considering its age. I got it for ten cents at a resale shop along with a bunch of other quick-read mysteries, including two more by this author. I’ll definitely be checking those out as well.
May 6, 2022
A solid 3.5 stars. Looking forward to reading the rest.
February 17, 2025
Decently written. A fairly short paperback which was easy to travel with. I'm getting the sense that murder mysteries aren't my genre of choice...
February 10, 2025
This is a fun read when you need to relax with a good British mystery! Loretta Lawson is an intriguing and likeable character.
August 28, 2010
I have never heard of this book, and have never heard of this author. But I saw the book offered on a forum as a freebie, and thought it sounded interesting, so I asked to receive it. It was published in 1989, and I thought there might be things terribly dated about the story, but now that I have finished it, there is only one thing I realized wasn't really there, which I'll talk about at the end of this review.
Loretta Lawson, a professor of Women's Studies at London University, is in Paris for a conference, and has planned to stay at a flat owned by an acquaintance who will be out of town. The first night she arrives (very late at night), she is somewhat surprised to see that another person is sleeping in the other bedroom, as she was not aware that anyone else would be there. She oversleeps the next morning, and rushes out of the apartment and does not return again until later that evening. The other guest is gone, but there are bloody bed sheets on the floor of the extra room!
The story deals with Loretta's personal dilemma of whether or not to call the police, and then later, her attempts to find out who the victim was and who murdered the person. As it turns out, the victim was a prominent literary critic who taught at Oxford, and had a lot of enemies. Loretta gets to know several people that she thinks may have been involved, and tries to figure out who is her prime suspect.
This was an enjoyable read, and a good story. Loretta's friends are described in a manner that makes them seem like fairly average people, and the academic side of things is both amusing and not very surprising. Only after finishing the book did I realize that none of the characters had a cell phone! Therefore, the story tended to be more leisurely, though not slow and dull. It was nice to read about someone who absolutely had to wait to call someone or hear from someone when she had the opportunity to be near a phone.
I may look to see if there are any other Loretta Lawson mysteries by this author, as this one was nicely done. I'd like to see if I enjoyed another one as much, or if it was just the novelty of a new "detective" or setting.
Loretta Lawson, a professor of Women's Studies at London University, is in Paris for a conference, and has planned to stay at a flat owned by an acquaintance who will be out of town. The first night she arrives (very late at night), she is somewhat surprised to see that another person is sleeping in the other bedroom, as she was not aware that anyone else would be there. She oversleeps the next morning, and rushes out of the apartment and does not return again until later that evening. The other guest is gone, but there are bloody bed sheets on the floor of the extra room!
The story deals with Loretta's personal dilemma of whether or not to call the police, and then later, her attempts to find out who the victim was and who murdered the person. As it turns out, the victim was a prominent literary critic who taught at Oxford, and had a lot of enemies. Loretta gets to know several people that she thinks may have been involved, and tries to figure out who is her prime suspect.
This was an enjoyable read, and a good story. Loretta's friends are described in a manner that makes them seem like fairly average people, and the academic side of things is both amusing and not very surprising. Only after finishing the book did I realize that none of the characters had a cell phone! Therefore, the story tended to be more leisurely, though not slow and dull. It was nice to read about someone who absolutely had to wait to call someone or hear from someone when she had the opportunity to be near a phone.
I may look to see if there are any other Loretta Lawson mysteries by this author, as this one was nicely done. I'd like to see if I enjoyed another one as much, or if it was just the novelty of a new "detective" or setting.
December 3, 2015
I first became acquainted with Joan Smith through her earlier book, Misogynies. I was striving - as many women do - to try to sort out the logic between male love of sex with women and contempt - if not hatred - of us at the same time. Women's reactions to men are rarely misanthropic; we tend to want to trust and believe men for some reason that I have to admit does not comport with our lived experience a great deal of the time. Despite finding that men lie to women on a daily basis (by omission as well as commission), we let it slide in the interests of harmony. But once a pattern is established, we can almost always tell when men are lying about the important things. All too often, however, we live in denial because admitting the truth is too painful. Misogynies was Smith's attempt to awaken women to the pervasiveness of male hatred in our cultures and to understand what drives it.
A Masculine Ending is a different genre altogether. Smith makes a foray into fiction to enter the bastions of misogyny that shape Brit culture and life. Her heroine is a professor of women's studies, Loretta Lawson, who comes upon the corpse of a murdered man in the borrowed Paris flat of a male friend who is purportedly on a holiday in Greece. Loretta is attending an academic conference at which she delivers a discussion paper with sexist dimensions and implications. Smith handles the great divide between male and female intellectual skills and styles with a deft eye for the absurd as well as keen observation of the cognitive disconnections that characterise male and female thought processes. The result is an entertaining and stimulating addition to the feminist character novel genre, one that parses competing points of view with dexterity and humour making it fun for both women and men to read.
May 7, 2016
One of my friends recommended Joan Smith's Loretta Lawson books after I said I was looking for crime books written by British women, that didn't necessarily involve police detectives.
Loretta Lawson is an English professor at a university in London. She's a feminist in an era when feminism was often equated with lesbianism and radical political views. However, with the benefit of around 30 years' hindsight, Loretta is just a normal woman, living a normal life. I can't help thinking it would have been more of an eye-opener when it was written in the mid-1980s.
The action takes place in Paris, London and Oxford and it captures the era perfectly, in a way that Agatha Christie's books capture the 1920-30s. Loretta listens to tapes of her favourite pop music whilst driving, she has to use a telephone box when her landline develops a fault, and her research is carried out in libraries using newspaper cuttings. It's what we used to do before the digital era and the Internet.
We see events unfolding through Loretta's eyes, and find that her feminism sometimes clouds her judgement about people. I really enjoyed the humour in a very minor sub-plot of attempts to change gender-based French grammar, references to Spare Rib and male-hated women's support groups.
As characters and story developed, I began to make sense of the mystery, but made the mistake of reading a review of a TV adaptation on imdb.com, which gave the game away. Still, it was an enjoyable, somewhat nostalgic read, and not at all taxing.
Loretta Lawson is an English professor at a university in London. She's a feminist in an era when feminism was often equated with lesbianism and radical political views. However, with the benefit of around 30 years' hindsight, Loretta is just a normal woman, living a normal life. I can't help thinking it would have been more of an eye-opener when it was written in the mid-1980s.
The action takes place in Paris, London and Oxford and it captures the era perfectly, in a way that Agatha Christie's books capture the 1920-30s. Loretta listens to tapes of her favourite pop music whilst driving, she has to use a telephone box when her landline develops a fault, and her research is carried out in libraries using newspaper cuttings. It's what we used to do before the digital era and the Internet.
We see events unfolding through Loretta's eyes, and find that her feminism sometimes clouds her judgement about people. I really enjoyed the humour in a very minor sub-plot of attempts to change gender-based French grammar, references to Spare Rib and male-hated women's support groups.
As characters and story developed, I began to make sense of the mystery, but made the mistake of reading a review of a TV adaptation on imdb.com, which gave the game away. Still, it was an enjoyable, somewhat nostalgic read, and not at all taxing.
January 13, 2024
If you’re looking for an easy read, this is it. Loretta Lawson managed to bumble her way into a murder investigation and was able to tie up all its loose ends ever so neatly in 214 pages. The protagonist’s strong feminist beliefs aided in her search for the killer in some ways, and it both saddened me and made me chuckle at how many ways the world hasn’t changed since the writing of this novel (the French are still trying to change the masculine endings of words and it’s still common to attempt to fend off a man by telling him you’re gay for him to then become angry with you). And yet for all its charm, I cannot get over the fact that Loretta let the killer leave? And did nothing? Just to save herself from having to explain her involvement? ? ? ? She lost all sense of morality or justice or compassion or whatever it was that she had in the beginning. Maybe the next book in the series gives more insight into what she does with her knowledge, but I seriously doubt it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 21, 2014
I enjoyed this a lot.
This novel was published in 1987 and I read it in 2014. Clearly, it's a bit outdated by now, but it's certainly interesting to kind of get back into that mindset. This novel, if written today, would have to be written completely differently. It was fun reading about someone attempting to solve a crime without any access to modern devices, like mobile phones or the Internet.
Other than that, I liked the pace. Nothing is rushed, we get clues and new characters in a well-paced manner, and a satisfying ending. This was a quick read over the weekend, perfectly enjoyable on a rainy day.
Being a huge Virginia Woolf enthusiast, I liked the shoutouts, by the way.
This novel was published in 1987 and I read it in 2014. Clearly, it's a bit outdated by now, but it's certainly interesting to kind of get back into that mindset. This novel, if written today, would have to be written completely differently. It was fun reading about someone attempting to solve a crime without any access to modern devices, like mobile phones or the Internet.
Other than that, I liked the pace. Nothing is rushed, we get clues and new characters in a well-paced manner, and a satisfying ending. This was a quick read over the weekend, perfectly enjoyable on a rainy day.
Being a huge Virginia Woolf enthusiast, I liked the shoutouts, by the way.
August 7, 2011
Good writing and overall a good story. I would have rated it higher, but I absolutely hate those open-ended endings. Where you find out who did it (I guessed, but didn't know why exactly), but you don't know if s/he gets caught or not. Does Loretta turn the culprit in? Considering that she doesn't tell the police anything all through the book, who knows. And there's no evidence in the book that the police are anywhere near the right answer....
July 5, 2011
I enjoyed this book even though I thought the heroine behaved a bit childishly at times. I sympathized with what she did once the mystery was solved, and might have found myself tempted to do the same in her situation. Overall, this was an unusual mystery but a very readable one, with an interesting peek into university life/feminist theory in the late 80s.
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July 11, 2008I hate it when I figure out the mystery before the end of the book!
February 12, 2009
Yeah, I finished it. I'd invested 158 pages. I HAD to find out who did it.
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March 7, 2019I first encountered Joan Smith through Antonia Bird's film of A Masculine Ending in 1992 and completed her small canon of work within quite quickly after. Revisiting this book again, after all that time, I felt a bit disappointed. Comments about highbrow literature and feminine politics went way over my head as though not really inviting the casual crime fiction reader. The plot was underwelming and I kept confusing it with the film which I still have on tape. Maybe her later work will be more enjoyable and would come with any excess baggage.
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