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The Adventures of Isabel: An Epitome Apartments Mystery
Book one in a new playful and trope-bending mystery series featuring a queer, nameless amateur detective.
“Candas Jane Dorsey’s terrific mysteries are what would happen if Raymond Chandler and Frank N. Furter collaborated on cozies and the heroine were a pansexual private detective with heart, smarts, and a T-shirt saying MASCARA IS THE NEW NOIR.” — Sarah Smith, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Vanished Child.
Rescued from torpor and poverty by the need to help a good friend deal with the murder of her beloved granddaughter, our downsized-social-worker protagonist and her cat, Bunnywit, are jolted into a harsh, street-wise world of sex, lies, and betrayal, to which they respond with irony, wit, intelligence (except for the cat), and tenacity. With judicious use of the Oxford comma, pop culture trivia, common mystery tropes, and a keen eye for deceit, our protagonist swaggers through the mean streets of — yes, a Canadian city! — and discovers that what seems at first to be just a grotty little street killing is actually the surface of a grandiose and glittering set of criminal schemes.
“Candas Jane Dorsey’s terrific mysteries are what would happen if Raymond Chandler and Frank N. Furter collaborated on cozies and the heroine were a pansexual private detective with heart, smarts, and a T-shirt saying MASCARA IS THE NEW NOIR.” — Sarah Smith, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Vanished Child.
Rescued from torpor and poverty by the need to help a good friend deal with the murder of her beloved granddaughter, our downsized-social-worker protagonist and her cat, Bunnywit, are jolted into a harsh, street-wise world of sex, lies, and betrayal, to which they respond with irony, wit, intelligence (except for the cat), and tenacity. With judicious use of the Oxford comma, pop culture trivia, common mystery tropes, and a keen eye for deceit, our protagonist swaggers through the mean streets of — yes, a Canadian city! — and discovers that what seems at first to be just a grotty little street killing is actually the surface of a grandiose and glittering set of criminal schemes.
262 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 20, 2020
125 people are currently reading
582 people want to read
About the author
Candas Jane Dorsey
19 books49 followersCandas Jane Dorsey (born November 16, 1952) is a Canadian poet and science fiction novelist.
Born and still living in Edmonton, Alberta, Dorsey became a writer from an early age, and a freelance writer since 1980. She writes across genre boundaries, writing poetry, fiction, mainstream and speculative, short and long form, arts journalism and arts advocacy. Dorsey has also written television and stage scripts, magazine and newspaper articles, and reviews.
Dorsey currently teaches, does workshops and readings. She has served on the executive board of the Writers' Guild of Alberta and is a founder of SF Canada. In 1988, Dorsey received the Aurora, Canadian science fiction and fantasy award.
Dorsey was editor-in-chief of The Books Collective (River, Slipstream and Tesseract Books) from 1992 through 2005.
- Source: Wikipedia
Born and still living in Edmonton, Alberta, Dorsey became a writer from an early age, and a freelance writer since 1980. She writes across genre boundaries, writing poetry, fiction, mainstream and speculative, short and long form, arts journalism and arts advocacy. Dorsey has also written television and stage scripts, magazine and newspaper articles, and reviews.
Dorsey currently teaches, does workshops and readings. She has served on the executive board of the Writers' Guild of Alberta and is a founder of SF Canada. In 1988, Dorsey received the Aurora, Canadian science fiction and fantasy award.
Dorsey was editor-in-chief of The Books Collective (River, Slipstream and Tesseract Books) from 1992 through 2005.
- Source: Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 120 reviews
October 22, 2020
2.50 Stars. I hate to say this but this book was not for me. I would have DNF’d it if this was not a review copy. I struggled and took twice as long to read it than I expected. I love mysteries and a mystery staring a bisexual -or actually ambisexual- woman sounded great to me. Unfortunately, this was just not a match for my personal tastes.
The author has a very unique way of writing. This was first person but it was where the narrator speaks to you the reader. She also used third person a few times and there were even footnotes. And I almost forgot but the chapters were wicked short and choppy which was jarring at times. Now, take one or two of these different ways to write and I’m with you. I actually like the idea of first person for the main character and using third a few times to see what a main-secondary character is experiencing, but when you put all of those oddball things together it becomes way to gimmicky for me.
Not only did I find the style gimmicky but the book made me feel a little stupid at times. I lost count of how many times I had no idea what was going on or what the author was trying to say. I kept asking out loud “what did I just read?” Maybe I’m not cool enough or smart enough to get it, I don’t know.
I did think the author seemed “woke” about certain issues which I liked, but I do have to say I was a bit uncomfortable a couple times. The slur for a trans person was used and not called out which I just didn’t understand. I’m hoping this was taken out of the copy before this book was officially released. I also didn’t like how the first non-explicit, sex scenes started. The main character takes a homeless woman back to her apartment to feed and bathe. Once she is cleaned up the main character is now attracted to her so she asks about having sex with the homeless woman. My problem is how she asked about it. She basically says that the homeless woman should go wash herself off with bug shampoo so they can have sex. She’s treating the woman like a dog, here is your flea and tick powder, go wash up some more so I can f*ck you. Yeah that was just a big no for me.
There were a few good things here. I really liked the religious crazy cousin. I don’t normally say that but she was a really well-written character. I also liked some parts of the mystery. The problem was we would get into the flow of the mystery but then the main character would go on a tangent and the flow would stop. The author even tried to help us readers by repeating a few clues so we wouldn’t have to flip back, but even that felt overdone to me. I think authors should trust their reader’s which means trusting us to remember. Last good thing, there were a few really good quotes. The main is witty but her humor doesn’t always land, but when it does, out pops a few very clever quotes.
As a mystery fan I really wanted to love this. I think the biggest thing is stylistically this was not for me. When I’m having trouble even understanding what is going on, I know a book is not working for my tastes. There is going to be a sequel but I think out of fairness to the author and myself, I have to stop here. This is a book that may work better for others. I would suggest downloading a sample on Amazon -if they have one- so you can see if style wise this book might be for you.
A copy was given to me for a honest review.
The author has a very unique way of writing. This was first person but it was where the narrator speaks to you the reader. She also used third person a few times and there were even footnotes. And I almost forgot but the chapters were wicked short and choppy which was jarring at times. Now, take one or two of these different ways to write and I’m with you. I actually like the idea of first person for the main character and using third a few times to see what a main-secondary character is experiencing, but when you put all of those oddball things together it becomes way to gimmicky for me.
Not only did I find the style gimmicky but the book made me feel a little stupid at times. I lost count of how many times I had no idea what was going on or what the author was trying to say. I kept asking out loud “what did I just read?” Maybe I’m not cool enough or smart enough to get it, I don’t know.
I did think the author seemed “woke” about certain issues which I liked, but I do have to say I was a bit uncomfortable a couple times. The slur for a trans person was used and not called out which I just didn’t understand. I’m hoping this was taken out of the copy before this book was officially released. I also didn’t like how the first non-explicit, sex scenes started. The main character takes a homeless woman back to her apartment to feed and bathe. Once she is cleaned up the main character is now attracted to her so she asks about having sex with the homeless woman. My problem is how she asked about it. She basically says that the homeless woman should go wash herself off with bug shampoo so they can have sex. She’s treating the woman like a dog, here is your flea and tick powder, go wash up some more so I can f*ck you. Yeah that was just a big no for me.
There were a few good things here. I really liked the religious crazy cousin. I don’t normally say that but she was a really well-written character. I also liked some parts of the mystery. The problem was we would get into the flow of the mystery but then the main character would go on a tangent and the flow would stop. The author even tried to help us readers by repeating a few clues so we wouldn’t have to flip back, but even that felt overdone to me. I think authors should trust their reader’s which means trusting us to remember. Last good thing, there were a few really good quotes. The main is witty but her humor doesn’t always land, but when it does, out pops a few very clever quotes.
As a mystery fan I really wanted to love this. I think the biggest thing is stylistically this was not for me. When I’m having trouble even understanding what is going on, I know a book is not working for my tastes. There is going to be a sequel but I think out of fairness to the author and myself, I have to stop here. This is a book that may work better for others. I would suggest downloading a sample on Amazon -if they have one- so you can see if style wise this book might be for you.
A copy was given to me for a honest review.
August 28, 2021
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3.25 stars
The subtitle of this novel is quite apt: 'A Postmodern Mystery'. The Adventures of Isabel is to detective/mystery fiction what Picasso is to Turner. Candas Jane Dorsey has written an absorbing and extremely metafictional (the narrator frequently 'breaks' the fourth wall) mystery that feels very much of 'the now'. The novel's unmanned narrator, single, ambisexual, in her late thirties, a downsized social worker, is down on her luck. Her life takes an interesting turn when Maddy, the granddaughter of one her closest friends, is found murdered. Because of Maddy's line of work, Hep (aka her grandmother) believes that the police won't be solve her case.
Our protagonist begrudgingly takes on the role of 'detective', using her knowledge of the city's underbelly she uses a police connection and her extensive social network to solve Maddy's murderer. Her investigation is anything but straightforward, and often falls into the absurd a la Alice in Wonderland. The novel is less interested in the plot than it is with 'style'. The spotlight remains on the protagonist's meta narration. Dorsey's tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a 'contemporary' society is delightfully humorous.
The cast of characters are as entertaining as our narrator, and often their conversations spiral into the nonsensical. I particularly liked the narrator's relationship with her religious cousin and Jian (who is beyond cool). There are some running gags (Bunnywit's 'original' name, the fish sticks) that make the narrator's reality feel familiar.
As much as I loved the narrator's metafictional asides, or her ramblings on other characters' word-choices, it did seem that the 'murder story' was lost in all this postmodern cacophony. Amidst the characters' digressing discussions and our mc's various monologues, I often lost sight of the actual investigation. Still, I liked Dorsey's original approach to this genre, and I really 'clicked' with her protagonist. Without loosing the lighthearted tone of her narrative, Dorsey manages to directly address issues such as gender, sexuality, and race.
The novel's strength is in its energetic narrative and in the protagonist's dark humour. I will quite happily read another novel about this main character as I would like to learn more of her backstory.
A few quotes to give an idea of the narration:
3.25 stars
“I spend my days staring at the wall and fantasising about disembowelling my cat as an offering to whatever bitch goddess has been organising my life lately. I am so depressed that if I could motivate myself to it I'd commit suicide, but it's too proactive for me.”
The subtitle of this novel is quite apt: 'A Postmodern Mystery'. The Adventures of Isabel is to detective/mystery fiction what Picasso is to Turner. Candas Jane Dorsey has written an absorbing and extremely metafictional (the narrator frequently 'breaks' the fourth wall) mystery that feels very much of 'the now'. The novel's unmanned narrator, single, ambisexual, in her late thirties, a downsized social worker, is down on her luck. Her life takes an interesting turn when Maddy, the granddaughter of one her closest friends, is found murdered. Because of Maddy's line of work, Hep (aka her grandmother) believes that the police won't be solve her case.
“Hep then named an hourly rate which made even my overinflated self-indulgent subconscious blink, and between the emotional blackmail of being reminded how much I owed Denis, the memory of my empty cupboard, evocations of the pitiful dead kid, and greed, I was persuaded—provisionally, with confirmation to be given once I sobered up—to give up my career as a call girl and become a detective.”
Our protagonist begrudgingly takes on the role of 'detective', using her knowledge of the city's underbelly she uses a police connection and her extensive social network to solve Maddy's murderer. Her investigation is anything but straightforward, and often falls into the absurd a la Alice in Wonderland. The novel is less interested in the plot than it is with 'style'. The spotlight remains on the protagonist's meta narration. Dorsey's tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a 'contemporary' society is delightfully humorous.
The cast of characters are as entertaining as our narrator, and often their conversations spiral into the nonsensical. I particularly liked the narrator's relationship with her religious cousin and Jian (who is beyond cool). There are some running gags (Bunnywit's 'original' name, the fish sticks) that make the narrator's reality feel familiar.
As much as I loved the narrator's metafictional asides, or her ramblings on other characters' word-choices, it did seem that the 'murder story' was lost in all this postmodern cacophony. Amidst the characters' digressing discussions and our mc's various monologues, I often lost sight of the actual investigation. Still, I liked Dorsey's original approach to this genre, and I really 'clicked' with her protagonist. Without loosing the lighthearted tone of her narrative, Dorsey manages to directly address issues such as gender, sexuality, and race.
The novel's strength is in its energetic narrative and in the protagonist's dark humour. I will quite happily read another novel about this main character as I would like to learn more of her backstory.
A few quotes to give an idea of the narration:
“These days, I was so deprived that I didn't trust my impulses. Anyone warmblooded, intelligent, and healthy, interested me. Even some people who weren't.”
“I didn't have much of a life. In a traditional narrative, the subplot would have intervened by now. Another friend with another problem. A kooky, loveable family. A liking for gourmet cooking. A workout at a gym with a cute hunk after my ass.”
“He was now too valuable to give away, kill in a fury, use as a plot device, or even call a rude name.”
“In a traditional narrative, or a movie, there'd be at least a montage of drag club scenes, if not an unbalanced amount of time devoted to a semi-prurient, semi-anthropological survey of the scene for the armchair voyeurs. I can't supply it.”
“I had to interpret their pronoun that way, because I couldn't believe the other option, that they were politically aware of the gender-critiquing diorama played out in the choice of of high-camp female tropes to create a topos of female construct confounding actual genetic sex and backgrounded against issues of orientation politics, and had chosen to use the semantic signifier to indicate recognition of the radical linguosocial statement inherent in the transvestism of queer/drag. No. They didn't seem that complex; they seemed like old-fashioned thugs, not at all post-modern.”
“Clearly clothes did not make the man. Or, in my case, the heterosexual.”
“He smiled. This guy didn't grin, he smiled. He was a cultured fellow.”
“I guess that qualifies as an excellent subplot. Come to think of it. Which I hated doing; it made my head hurt. Clichés abound, and I wanted to refuse the rags-to-riches one.”
“"Let me get this straight," I said "well, not straight, but let me be sure I understand this."”
“Leaving my living room full of detectives, not one of them with a fucking clue. Not that I was any better. My clues weren't fucking either.”
“"But now what?" she said. One of the existential questions. I certainly didn't know the answer.”
“"Zat is terrible" (You get the accent, right? So enough with the zeds already.)”
“Apparently fraud is like speeding only more so—lots of people do it, but very few actually get caught.”
June 11, 2022
I really enjoyed this first book in a mystery series and excited to go into next one, hopefully and probably very soon. Interesting characters and plot that never have a dull moment.
August 15, 2020
I really liked this book, with a few caveats. The unnamed, snarky, grammar-conscious, tell-it-like-it-is bisexual social worker turned amateur detective captured my imagination. Her first person narrative is very meta, clever, and self-conscious, so it won't be for everyone, but I found it quite fun. Secondary characters were also wonderful, including Jian, a former gymnastics star from Hong Kong who has ended up homeless, a white lesbian sex worker, and a fundamentalist Christian cousin who starts to question the hypocrisy of the expression of Christianity around her.
I ended up feeling quite attached to all three of those supporting characters, who I felt were all carefully written to explode stereotypes. Pretty much all the characters are queer, which I always love. The mystery itself was very smart and fun too. And the entire novel uses the poem "The Adventures of Isabel" by Ogden Nash as a clever loose structuring device, which is something I don't think I've seen before.
Now for the caveats. First of all, the mystery is based around the death of a sex worker. (Although she is shown to be very smart and resourceful in retrospect and is characterized as, like, a real person not just a plot device). But still, did this have to be the catalyst for the story?
Second, this book falls a little too much on the side of a uniformly positive portrayal of the cops for my liking. I mean, I hope to god there are detectives who care about the murder of sex workers like there are in this book, but I would have liked a bit of attention paid to the overwhelming fact of that not being the case in the real life, plus the targeting of other vulnerable groups like people who are homeless that is so common with cops.
Third, there are two instances of cis characters who casually use the t-slur for trans women and go unchallenged. The first is Maddy, the white lesbian sex worker, who is very upset about the murder of her girlfriend (not a good time to call someone in) and probably learned the word from trans women sex workers not knowing its connotations. I could let that fly by. But the second is a cis gay man police officer who absolutely should have been confronted about it. Knowing the main character calls her cousin out on her church's homophobic stuff meant it felt out of character for her not to say something to the cop. So that left a bad taste in my mouth.
I did read an ARC of this book, though, so it's possible some of these issues are fixed before the final copy is released. Fingers crossed! I am excited to see where this series goes, especially as we have so few mainstream mysteries with queer women protagonists! And this one is Canadian!
I ended up feeling quite attached to all three of those supporting characters, who I felt were all carefully written to explode stereotypes. Pretty much all the characters are queer, which I always love. The mystery itself was very smart and fun too. And the entire novel uses the poem "The Adventures of Isabel" by Ogden Nash as a clever loose structuring device, which is something I don't think I've seen before.
Now for the caveats. First of all, the mystery is based around the death of a sex worker. (Although she is shown to be very smart and resourceful in retrospect and is characterized as, like, a real person not just a plot device). But still, did this have to be the catalyst for the story?
Second, this book falls a little too much on the side of a uniformly positive portrayal of the cops for my liking. I mean, I hope to god there are detectives who care about the murder of sex workers like there are in this book, but I would have liked a bit of attention paid to the overwhelming fact of that not being the case in the real life, plus the targeting of other vulnerable groups like people who are homeless that is so common with cops.
Third, there are two instances of cis characters who casually use the t-slur for trans women and go unchallenged. The first is Maddy, the white lesbian sex worker, who is very upset about the murder of her girlfriend (not a good time to call someone in) and probably learned the word from trans women sex workers not knowing its connotations. I could let that fly by. But the second is a cis gay man police officer who absolutely should have been confronted about it. Knowing the main character calls her cousin out on her church's homophobic stuff meant it felt out of character for her not to say something to the cop. So that left a bad taste in my mouth.
I did read an ARC of this book, though, so it's possible some of these issues are fixed before the final copy is released. Fingers crossed! I am excited to see where this series goes, especially as we have so few mainstream mysteries with queer women protagonists! And this one is Canadian!
August 16, 2021
⭐️ 2.5 ⭐️
Unfortunately not the book for me.
Candas Jane Dorsey has an interesting, individual writing style - whilst mostly enjoyable, I did at times find it slightly erratic and jarring. I also struggled with some of the narrative and terms/expressions used; on more than one occasion I had absolutely no idea what the author was saying.
I did like the diverse, well-written characters, but I wasn’t really invested in their story and sadly it just fell a little flat for me.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC, in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
Unfortunately not the book for me.
Candas Jane Dorsey has an interesting, individual writing style - whilst mostly enjoyable, I did at times find it slightly erratic and jarring. I also struggled with some of the narrative and terms/expressions used; on more than one occasion I had absolutely no idea what the author was saying.
I did like the diverse, well-written characters, but I wasn’t really invested in their story and sadly it just fell a little flat for me.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC, in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
September 6, 2024
Finally it’s over
August 29, 2023
Das Buch hat mich nicht abgeholt. Ich mochte weder den Schreibstil noch den Plot. Die Überschriften der unzähligen Kapitel habe ich bis jetzt nicht verstanden. Und dass die Erzählperson ständig im Schmerzmittel-bedingtem Delirium war hat es für mich als Leserin nur langweilig gemacht.
June 5, 2020
Ok, so which is it? Is it Canadian Lisbeth Salander meets ambisexual Kinsey Milhone or is it ambisexual V.I. Warshawski meets Kinky Friedman? Because, of course, it would be too much to ask for the official description to feature originality when it can safely rely on convenient genre name dropping instead. The only thing you do get out of all that for sure is that the protagonist of this novel is ambisexual (the latest PC label for bisexuality), because for one thing she herself never shuts up about it. Well past the who cares about it, it’s 2020, that’s about the least original you can be sexuality wise juncture. So anyway, aside from that the not so mysterious albeit mysteriously nameless protagonist isn’t at all a private investigator, she’s a laid off social worker who as a favor to a friend and (mainly) out of financial desperation sets off to investigate a murder of a friend’s granddaughter, a 20 year old prostitute and a junkie. Needless to say, some unsavory characters are to be expected, but her investigation ends up reaching well into the higher echelons of the local social elite. And along the way there are plenty of stumbles, oodles of fun, lively, well positively flamboyant, characters, impressive amounts of drag and copious amounts of beatings. I mean, main character as a punching bag sort of beatings. In that way I suppose one might say she is kind of reminiscent of V. I. who also tends to get in a way of fists and sticks. She’s certainly nowhere near the spectacular Miss Salander. I mean, for one thing she’s positively a Luddite, only acquiring her first smartphone for this case. Who even came up with that? Is it because she has some tattoos? Cause that’s just…dumb. There’s also an appropriately quirky love story. And how quirky, you ask? So quirky it features a homeless Chinese acrobat lady, that’s how. Because, remember, our character is bisexual. Don’t forget that, she won’t let you. To that extent she also makes absolutely terrible puns about it too. It’s actually almost incongruous with her otherwise very well spoken, clever linguistic turns, not to mention her uber strict, positively severe grammarian ways. So the overall effect is that of a smart well versed person occasionally punning at like stoned teen level, like getting wild amusement out of straight character having a straight face. It’s…what’s the kind word…silly. Our protagonist’s age isn’t specified either, but it seems to be somewhere around 40. Why the vagueness? Is it to have something to build on? There are further books in the series. Ones I may or may not read. It’s that kind of thing, to be fair I probably might if they showed up on Netgalley. It’s a pretty entertaining sort of thing, albeit it the main bulk of entertainment is derived from the characters, not the mystery itself. And with that sort of thing…once the quirkiness gets tiresome, that’s about it. The mystery itself didn’t really interest that much. It was there, it worked, the evildoers were just as quirky in their ways and with oh so amusingly (pun ready) names. The love story subplot was kinda cute, in fact appropriately cute for this sort of book. Because this is book is mainly cute, so cute it’s inexplicably set within the confines of Ogden Nash’s famous poem. Meaning short ish chapters with too many chapter titles. There are even some cute footnotes. So overall…entertaining, albeit the schtick was getting tiresome toward the end, it just wasn’t long enough to get monotonous or tedious. Pretty charming characters in a rainbow sparkles kind of way. A cunning linguist (puns, so easy) for a protagonist, aside from puns. Great social message of equality and inclusiveness
all around and all that. Read quickly enough. Fun was had. Thanks Netgalley.
all around and all that. Read quickly enough. Fun was had. Thanks Netgalley.
August 13, 2021
This is a difficult book to review, as I’m still not sure what I thought. It’s so different from anything I’ve read before. It’s definitely original and manages to combine the conventions of cosy crime with the mean streets of noir fiction. There’s very little in the way of guts and gore or police procedure but there’s oodles of tough guys, drug cartels and violent far right religious groups.
Dorsey has a very unique writing style too, which I think some will love and others will hate. It took me a while to get used to, but I did start to enjoy the way our unnamed, unconventional, ambisexual narrator, tells the story of her unexpected turn into the role of hardboiled detective, in a consistently snarky, quirky and sarcastic style.
The protagonist is an unemployed social worker, who was forced out of her last job due to her sexuality (illegal, but difficult to prove). As such, she understands the corrupt side of society and cares about silenced voices.
When she’s approached by her elderly but very cool friend, Hep, to help uncover her granddaughter’s murder, she’s reluctant to get involved. Hep believes that as Maddy was a sex worker, her murder is unlikely to get the police’s full attention. However, it’s mostly her lack of employment that convinces the narrator to take the case.
The investigation forces her to explore the seedy underbelly of the city, coming across many unsavoury characters and into harm’s way on several occasions. However, she also makes a diverse range of friends along the way. When it seems like the corruption leads to the city’s social elite, as well as into powerful religious groups, it becomes obvious that the friends will have to work together to bring down the bad guys.
There are a diverse range of sexualities, nationalities and ages represented in this novel. Some of my favourite supporting characters were; Jian, a homeless, Chinese gymnast; Thel, the narrator’s deeply religious cousin, who goes on a journey of self discovery when she realises that her church has a very different take on Christian values to her own; and of course Bunnywit, the boot-loving feline sidekick.
Overall, I did enjoy this unusual novel. The more I read, the more it became a page turner. The humour and style definitely grew on me, although I think a fair few of the cultural references flew over my head. I’ll be interested to see what happens to the gang in future instalments.
Thank you to Tara at Pushkin Press for my gifted copy in return for an honest review.
Dorsey has a very unique writing style too, which I think some will love and others will hate. It took me a while to get used to, but I did start to enjoy the way our unnamed, unconventional, ambisexual narrator, tells the story of her unexpected turn into the role of hardboiled detective, in a consistently snarky, quirky and sarcastic style.
The protagonist is an unemployed social worker, who was forced out of her last job due to her sexuality (illegal, but difficult to prove). As such, she understands the corrupt side of society and cares about silenced voices.
When she’s approached by her elderly but very cool friend, Hep, to help uncover her granddaughter’s murder, she’s reluctant to get involved. Hep believes that as Maddy was a sex worker, her murder is unlikely to get the police’s full attention. However, it’s mostly her lack of employment that convinces the narrator to take the case.
The investigation forces her to explore the seedy underbelly of the city, coming across many unsavoury characters and into harm’s way on several occasions. However, she also makes a diverse range of friends along the way. When it seems like the corruption leads to the city’s social elite, as well as into powerful religious groups, it becomes obvious that the friends will have to work together to bring down the bad guys.
There are a diverse range of sexualities, nationalities and ages represented in this novel. Some of my favourite supporting characters were; Jian, a homeless, Chinese gymnast; Thel, the narrator’s deeply religious cousin, who goes on a journey of self discovery when she realises that her church has a very different take on Christian values to her own; and of course Bunnywit, the boot-loving feline sidekick.
Overall, I did enjoy this unusual novel. The more I read, the more it became a page turner. The humour and style definitely grew on me, although I think a fair few of the cultural references flew over my head. I’ll be interested to see what happens to the gang in future instalments.
Thank you to Tara at Pushkin Press for my gifted copy in return for an honest review.
did-not-finish
July 4, 2022I really wanted to like this one—I read it described somewhere as “queer Nancy Drew” which i loved!—but could not get through it so I’m DNFing it at 44%. Each chapter was extremely short and there were many of them; this led to a choppy, disjointed reading experience. I was also put off by characters’ unchallenged use of a slur for trans people, which was jarring given that the characters were otherwise progressive and aware.
March 1, 2022
A fun, fast read with a unique cast of characters. The author is clearly skilled at the one-liners and subtle jokes, sneaking in so much snark and funny asides that it's fun to read back for the ones you missed! I love how the book followed an Ogden Nash poem, bringing structure of a sort to a non-Isabel storyteller. This will be a fun series, I can't wait to read the next one!
June 14, 2024
It was okay. The core mystery was interesting, and I liked most of the side characters. Surprisingly, the religious cousin of the narrator was my favorite, if only because we got to see her realize how fucked up organized religion can be. The narration was confusing half the time, and the ebook copy on Hoopla had a lot of spelling errors. Which is funny given how much of a stickler the mc is about proper grammar. Some were definitely done on purpose, but there were more that were clear mistakes.
September 4, 2025
Der Titel nervt mich, denn es wäre ein perfektes Queeres Buch. Es geht um queere Themen, ohne dass es um queere Themen geht.
Es geht eig um eine bisexuelle Sozialarbeiterin (viel besserer Titel meiner Meinung nach), die einen Mord aufklärt. Eine Katze, Obdachlosigkeit, Gewalt, Religion, Familie und chinesisches Essen spielen auch eine Rolle.
Es macht Intersektionalität auf eine nicht-nur-depremierende Art sichtbar und das ist eine Leistung mMn.
Sprachlich angenehm, manche Referenzen hab ich nicht verstanden (bin zu jung wohl und nicht aus Canadaa), aber die Geschichte läuft schnell ab und die Dialoge sind pfiffig.
Es geht eig um eine bisexuelle Sozialarbeiterin (viel besserer Titel meiner Meinung nach), die einen Mord aufklärt. Eine Katze, Obdachlosigkeit, Gewalt, Religion, Familie und chinesisches Essen spielen auch eine Rolle.
Es macht Intersektionalität auf eine nicht-nur-depremierende Art sichtbar und das ist eine Leistung mMn.
Sprachlich angenehm, manche Referenzen hab ich nicht verstanden (bin zu jung wohl und nicht aus Canadaa), aber die Geschichte läuft schnell ab und die Dialoge sind pfiffig.
March 16, 2024
Some quirky characters with some very elegant English writing. Cohesive plot although I found the use of subscripts frustrating, mostly because I was reading an ebook version so it was hard to go back and forth to find the reference (there were a lot of subscripts, 24). The use of an Ogden Nash poem was fun and related beautifully to the story. All in all, an interesting read. An added bonus for me is that it is Canadian.
April 4, 2024
Couldn’t get through this due to the first two slurs, the f and the slur for trans people. It made be so uncomfortable. I started googling to find out if the author was gay or trans. No, a white middle aged queer woman. Just because you’re queer doesn’t mean you can use the slurs. It’s a no for me.
June 19, 2020
This books was... ok. I try to be positive in my reviews, so this book was ok. Would I recommend it? Not particularly. There was a mystery. There were evildoers. It all worked in a way. It is told in first person from the unnamed MC. She’s ambisexual or pansexual depending on what she remembers to say. She has a cat named Fuc- I mean Bunnywit. There were definite moments where I laughed. I wasn’t always sure if I was supposed to be laughing though? This book felt like the definition of “quirky” from the characters and narration to the formatting. Lots and lots of tiny chapters got very tedious, very quickly. Overall, a fun romp. Not sure I got much more than that from it.
I read this book as a free digital ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I read this book as a free digital ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
March 17, 2023
depending on your definition of DNF, i kinda sorta DNF'd this one. i got to page 180 or so- almost 2/3rds of the way through!- but found myself just limply dragging my interest across each page and realized i didn't really have the desire to finish. i skimmed the last hundred pages and read the last 5 pages (or so) in full, and then called it quits on this one.
as others have mentioned, candas jane dorsey's writing style is super unique, which i- for the most part- do enjoy. however, it's sometimes laid on a bit thick, and even though i love the wit, it comes sentence after sentence in such a fury that i eventually feel like i've lost hold of the thread and have no idea what's actually being said. add on the fact that the plot line progresses quite slowly (and then is explained in really murky and convoluted ways), and at times i found myself wishing for a TLDR. that's pretty much why i abandoned this one; at a certain point i simply had no idea what was happening in terms of the "murder mystery" aspect of the story and i frankly didn't care enough to try to figure it out.
to its benefit, the writing style does humanize the main character, who i can only describe as that quirky, nerdy, slightly pedantic friend we all had in high school; can be fun and has a good sense of humor, but best endured in small doses for your own sanity.
if this comes across as harsh, it's not my intention- i actually genuinely liked all the characters! i also understand that this is the first book in a planned series, so it only makes sense that the author is taking time to intentionally set the foundation of the character, setting, and general mood for the series... so i'm not mad at it, per se. but i just couldn't see myself carrying on with the series, which made me feel less inclined to finish this book properly.
i am not counting this as a full DNF based on my own definition, but... you know. take what you will from my experience.
as others have mentioned, candas jane dorsey's writing style is super unique, which i- for the most part- do enjoy. however, it's sometimes laid on a bit thick, and even though i love the wit, it comes sentence after sentence in such a fury that i eventually feel like i've lost hold of the thread and have no idea what's actually being said. add on the fact that the plot line progresses quite slowly (and then is explained in really murky and convoluted ways), and at times i found myself wishing for a TLDR. that's pretty much why i abandoned this one; at a certain point i simply had no idea what was happening in terms of the "murder mystery" aspect of the story and i frankly didn't care enough to try to figure it out.
to its benefit, the writing style does humanize the main character, who i can only describe as that quirky, nerdy, slightly pedantic friend we all had in high school; can be fun and has a good sense of humor, but best endured in small doses for your own sanity.
if this comes across as harsh, it's not my intention- i actually genuinely liked all the characters! i also understand that this is the first book in a planned series, so it only makes sense that the author is taking time to intentionally set the foundation of the character, setting, and general mood for the series... so i'm not mad at it, per se. but i just couldn't see myself carrying on with the series, which made me feel less inclined to finish this book properly.
i am not counting this as a full DNF based on my own definition, but... you know. take what you will from my experience.
July 13, 2020
Would I recommend this? Sorry but no.
I got this book as an ARC.
I am an ally of the LGBTQ+ community and was excited about that aspect of the book.
As for the book... It was so hard to like the characters.
As a cat lover, I did not think the whole cat thing worked, also Bunnywit and then calling it F*ckwit.... Come on. They are cats. Cats are weird.
The protagonist is a language purist, though ends up with a Chinese woman who can barely understand her, and she keeps using "big" words in conversation with her.
Also I felt like the Jian thing was uncomfortable... might have worked better if she was from a different nationality?
I haven't read a lot of fiction that has strong confident LGBTQ+ characters, so it was an extra let down. I'm sorry for the frank review.
I got this book as an ARC.
I am an ally of the LGBTQ+ community and was excited about that aspect of the book.
As for the book... It was so hard to like the characters.
As a cat lover, I did not think the whole cat thing worked, also Bunnywit and then calling it F*ckwit.... Come on. They are cats. Cats are weird.
The protagonist is a language purist, though ends up with a Chinese woman who can barely understand her, and she keeps using "big" words in conversation with her.
Also I felt like the Jian thing was uncomfortable... might have worked better if she was from a different nationality?
I haven't read a lot of fiction that has strong confident LGBTQ+ characters, so it was an extra let down. I'm sorry for the frank review.
Want to read
December 7, 2020I requested an e-arc of this book through NetGalley because the plot sounded really interesting. Queer Nancy Drew? Sign me up.
Unfortunately, like many of the other reviewers have said, this book just is not good. The dialog and writing tries too hard to be quirky and was just too painful to read. The book tried to be diverse, but it's characterization of some of its queer characters was too uncomfortable for me, a queer woman, to get through.
It's an okay book, but it's not for me and not something I would recommend to my queer friends or library patrons.
Unfortunately, like many of the other reviewers have said, this book just is not good. The dialog and writing tries too hard to be quirky and was just too painful to read. The book tried to be diverse, but it's characterization of some of its queer characters was too uncomfortable for me, a queer woman, to get through.
It's an okay book, but it's not for me and not something I would recommend to my queer friends or library patrons.
March 14, 2025
This novel is a fever dream. Personally I liked it, but I could see others disagreeing quite easily. The writing is incredibly original. At times it reads like a first-person stream of consciousness from a tipsy individual with undiagnosed ADHD; and I adored it. It was absolutely done on purpose, and I can tell this author is a hell of a good writer. There was a LOT going on, to put it simply. Mysteries on top of mysteries and an eclectic cast of characters.
This is a difficult novel to review. I liked it. There you go; novel reviewed.
This is a difficult novel to review. I liked it. There you go; novel reviewed.
August 1, 2025
I hated this! I had to force myself through it! It's poorly-plotted and poorly-written and its only goal in life seems to be constantly spewing 'witty' dialogue and banter and internal thoughts at the reader, very few of which are actually at all funny, and all of which become extremely annoying with the rate at which you're hit with them.
The story doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, there's not actually all that much "mystery" to the mystery when you get down to it. The murder victim was killed because she was onto a massive fraud and drugs operation, but she was murdered in suspicious circumstances and the main character only gets involved because she doesn't trust the police to solve the murder. And then, with her help, the police solve the murder and in fact turn out to have already been investigating the fraud and drugs operation. It's hard to point exactly to what the (never named) main character actually does that only she could have done or figured out, because she's almost always doing it with other people, with the possible exception of getting beaten up twice in two passages which are very bad at conveying any emotion or tension to the reader whatsoever. The second of these has about a page and a half of sudden action, followed by a chapter of other characters explaining to the main character what happened and why it was all fine in the end.
The main character is snarky in a way that is just intensely irritating and not funny, something which I suspect is author voice, because she shares this trait with other characters whenever the author feels like it. The snark is non-stop and not always appropriate: characters make jokes about a child prostitute who died of hepatitis (ha ha, it's funny because one of the characters is called Hepburn!) The characters don't really make a whole lot of sense either in lots of ways, because their characterisation will go out of the window for the sake of them telling jokes: another young sex worker has her speech pedantically phonetically rendered sometimes to communicate her supposed stupidity, but suddenly when she's the best person in a scene to make a 'funny' pun, she's a master of 'funny' wordplay.
The attempts at humour actually damaged my ability to follow the story, because the main character is constantly coming up with new 'funny' nicknames for characters without telling you this is what she's doing, and so sometimes her internal monologue becomes genuinely hard to parse because it's not very clear who she is even talking about. In one scene towards the end I couldn't figure out which of the characters at a memorial were meant to be people we'd seen before. This is pretty bad in what's ostensibly a mystery story!
Quite a lot of things really make this book feel like it was written by someone in her late sixties. There's an odd conservative feeling to it despite how supposedly progressive it is trying to be with queer characters and sex workers. The main character is introduced with us being told that she's "ambisexual" and likes to sleep with basically anyone, but she immediately gets into a committed relationship with a homeless woman she 'rescues' from the streets and then they're together and immediately in love and monogamous the entire book; similarly we meet a gay man who is supposed to be massively promiscuous, but then he meets the other gay male character and by the end of the book they are about to get married? I think they've known each other for a few weeks? (the book is not good at communicating timescales) The book has lots of sex workers as minor or background characters, and the book's sympathetic to them to a point...but clearly thinks that that sympathy provides cover to be constantly snide and rude and denigrating about them. There's a moment where a character sees needle tracks on the main character's arm, and the main character feels the need to assure us that those needle tracks are actually from a hospital IV...but also that she does have needle tracks from drugs elsewhere on her arm? What is this?
And it's not just about social conservatism; there's some extremely funny stuff about the main character seeming to be confused by the concept of a cell phone. She's supposed to be in her thirties.
"Show, don't tell" is a bit of an oversimplified direction, but this is definitely a book that fell back on just telling me things had happened or were about to happen. It was terrible at communicating the main character's emotion to the point she barely seemed to have any, except for decently-communicated depression right at the start, and occasionally crying. There's a whole digression about how to show the reader things the main character didn't witness, and the book alternates between verbatim transcribing what other characters say, and sometimes just forgetting about the narrator persona and telling you outright. The book sometimes tries to create tension by telling you "ooh, something will happen in the future!" and then something generally doesn't. The 'climax', arguably, tries to build tension by constantly telling you that the people the main character is meeting with are Very Bad and Dangerous, but she has to keep telling you that because literally nothing interesting happens and the plan to catch them goes absolutely flawlessly. So what was the point in trying to tell me that she was in danger? Turns out she was not.
It was insufferable to read and I can't believe there's two more of these, this is going straight on the charity shop pile.
The story doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, there's not actually all that much "mystery" to the mystery when you get down to it. The murder victim was killed because she was onto a massive fraud and drugs operation, but she was murdered in suspicious circumstances and the main character only gets involved because she doesn't trust the police to solve the murder. And then, with her help, the police solve the murder and in fact turn out to have already been investigating the fraud and drugs operation. It's hard to point exactly to what the (never named) main character actually does that only she could have done or figured out, because she's almost always doing it with other people, with the possible exception of getting beaten up twice in two passages which are very bad at conveying any emotion or tension to the reader whatsoever. The second of these has about a page and a half of sudden action, followed by a chapter of other characters explaining to the main character what happened and why it was all fine in the end.
The main character is snarky in a way that is just intensely irritating and not funny, something which I suspect is author voice, because she shares this trait with other characters whenever the author feels like it. The snark is non-stop and not always appropriate: characters make jokes about a child prostitute who died of hepatitis (ha ha, it's funny because one of the characters is called Hepburn!) The characters don't really make a whole lot of sense either in lots of ways, because their characterisation will go out of the window for the sake of them telling jokes: another young sex worker has her speech pedantically phonetically rendered sometimes to communicate her supposed stupidity, but suddenly when she's the best person in a scene to make a 'funny' pun, she's a master of 'funny' wordplay.
The attempts at humour actually damaged my ability to follow the story, because the main character is constantly coming up with new 'funny' nicknames for characters without telling you this is what she's doing, and so sometimes her internal monologue becomes genuinely hard to parse because it's not very clear who she is even talking about. In one scene towards the end I couldn't figure out which of the characters at a memorial were meant to be people we'd seen before. This is pretty bad in what's ostensibly a mystery story!
Quite a lot of things really make this book feel like it was written by someone in her late sixties. There's an odd conservative feeling to it despite how supposedly progressive it is trying to be with queer characters and sex workers. The main character is introduced with us being told that she's "ambisexual" and likes to sleep with basically anyone, but she immediately gets into a committed relationship with a homeless woman she 'rescues' from the streets and then they're together and immediately in love and monogamous the entire book; similarly we meet a gay man who is supposed to be massively promiscuous, but then he meets the other gay male character and by the end of the book they are about to get married? I think they've known each other for a few weeks? (the book is not good at communicating timescales) The book has lots of sex workers as minor or background characters, and the book's sympathetic to them to a point...but clearly thinks that that sympathy provides cover to be constantly snide and rude and denigrating about them. There's a moment where a character sees needle tracks on the main character's arm, and the main character feels the need to assure us that those needle tracks are actually from a hospital IV...but also that she does have needle tracks from drugs elsewhere on her arm? What is this?
And it's not just about social conservatism; there's some extremely funny stuff about the main character seeming to be confused by the concept of a cell phone. She's supposed to be in her thirties.
"Show, don't tell" is a bit of an oversimplified direction, but this is definitely a book that fell back on just telling me things had happened or were about to happen. It was terrible at communicating the main character's emotion to the point she barely seemed to have any, except for decently-communicated depression right at the start, and occasionally crying. There's a whole digression about how to show the reader things the main character didn't witness, and the book alternates between verbatim transcribing what other characters say, and sometimes just forgetting about the narrator persona and telling you outright. The book sometimes tries to create tension by telling you "ooh, something will happen in the future!" and then something generally doesn't. The 'climax', arguably, tries to build tension by constantly telling you that the people the main character is meeting with are Very Bad and Dangerous, but she has to keep telling you that because literally nothing interesting happens and the plan to catch them goes absolutely flawlessly. So what was the point in trying to tell me that she was in danger? Turns out she was not.
It was insufferable to read and I can't believe there's two more of these, this is going straight on the charity shop pile.
January 18, 2021
Dorsey has attempted to write a crime fiction novel in the style of novels from the 1940’d and 1950’s. I could not finish this book, as I found it to be boring.
February 11, 2022
Unnecessarily confusing
October 7, 2022
Honestly at some point I didn’t even knew what was going on,because I was so confused what was happening in some chapters! But I liked the characters and the ides of the story.
November 5, 2022
Bisschen zu gewollt lustig.
November 30, 2025
Wow, this is the modern trashy hip Canadian detective voice we've all been looking for! Funny, intense, honest, quirky, the MC's voice is a siren call. Its not noir and gritty, its hip-not-hipster and gravelly.
This is totally a treat for the wordie:
A couple of plot holes detract, however.
Also, the footnotes should appear on the same page as the reference. They're often snark, and having to go to the end of the full chapter to find them is disruptive and annoying.
Really, this is engaging and surprising throughout, a subculture Wonderland touching and mixing with the mainstream and far right worlds. The open but NOT in-your-face sexuality of several characters works well, with no excuses, as a job or an activity, not as a weapon to beat the reader or the characters with.
And one of the best aspects of this story - the MCs work WITH the police. There is actual attention to what a civilian should and should not do (cops too). The reader doesn't have to pretend it's reasonable for the MC to pop about oblivious to (and plot-armored from) reality. A rational person, a reasonable person, can read this and empathize, can observe as if this was really going on. Which makes it grittier and scarier in its own way.
It did seem to drag a bit in places, which was odd, as the writing is great and the tone snarky and literate both.
The culture references are gems, the odd juxtaposition with the Ogden Nash poem is beautiful, the story odd and realistic. The ending satisfies at the same time it leaves the reader looking forward to more.
A detail that would normally be infuriating - quick, what's the MC's name? Didn't notice its never mentioned or used (Thelma calls her "C" at one point), until the author mentions it in the Acknowledgments section. "Our nameless friend will be back in..."
A REALLY good book! Looking forward to seeing how it reads in another 5-10 years...
The process was more like divination with entrails. Except, because I can't afford a new cat every time I have a life crisis, I leave the entrails in situ. It did have something to do with entrails throughThis is the MC describing using the cat...as a sounding board. Who could resist?
This is totally a treat for the wordie:
...because I couldn't believe the other option, that they were politically aware of the gender-critiquing diorama played out in the choice of high-camp female tropes to create a topos of female construct confounding actual genetic sex and backgrounded against issues of orientation politics, and had chosen to use the semantic signifier to indicate recognition of the radical linguosocial statement inherent in the transvestism of queer/drag.This bit is actually a tension-reliever - read it in context to laugh and feel awed, too. Who can even put a sequence of words like that together!? And still make sense. PS - The MC used to be a social worker, so it works coming from her. But it is so tongue-in-cheek!
No. They just didn't seem that complex; they seemed like old-fashioned thugs, not at all postmodern. (Ch 52)
A couple of plot holes detract, however.
Also, the footnotes should appear on the same page as the reference. They're often snark, and having to go to the end of the full chapter to find them is disruptive and annoying.
Really, this is engaging and surprising throughout, a subculture Wonderland touching and mixing with the mainstream and far right worlds. The open but NOT in-your-face sexuality of several characters works well, with no excuses, as a job or an activity, not as a weapon to beat the reader or the characters with.
And one of the best aspects of this story - the MCs work WITH the police. There is actual attention to what a civilian should and should not do (cops too). The reader doesn't have to pretend it's reasonable for the MC to pop about oblivious to (and plot-armored from) reality. A rational person, a reasonable person, can read this and empathize, can observe as if this was really going on. Which makes it grittier and scarier in its own way.
It did seem to drag a bit in places, which was odd, as the writing is great and the tone snarky and literate both.
The culture references are gems, the odd juxtaposition with the Ogden Nash poem is beautiful, the story odd and realistic. The ending satisfies at the same time it leaves the reader looking forward to more.
A detail that would normally be infuriating - quick, what's the MC's name? Didn't notice its never mentioned or used (Thelma calls her "C" at one point), until the author mentions it in the Acknowledgments section. "Our nameless friend will be back in..."
A REALLY good book! Looking forward to seeing how it reads in another 5-10 years...
February 10, 2021
When a young sex worker is murdered, her grandmother ("a woman in her sixties who looked like a five-foot-tall duplicate of Katharine Hepburn," and so is known to her friends as Hep) calls on her friend, the edgy, unemployed social worker who narrates this edgy, fast-paced mystery, to come to the morgue to identify the body.
They become the kernel of a diverse, colorful team of amateur sleuths who set out to solve young Maddy's murder, sometimes helping and other times interrupting the cops who are trying to do likewise. They include Denis, an intimacy-averse drag queen and crisis-intervention specialist; the narrator's previously estranged cousin Thelma, a born-again Christian; Vikki, Maddy's lover, who wants to get out of the life; and Jian, a woman who became homeless after fleeing her abusive husband and who turns out to be a world-class acrobat once she gets back in shape. In between, Jian and the ambisexual narrator carry on a hot affair that is mostly left to the reader's imagination. Fine with me: step-by-step sex scenes tend to slow down the action.
Maddy's murder turns out to be collateral damage in a criminal enterprise that involves not only murder but high-stakes fraud and drug dealing. Her efforts to get to the bottom of it take our narrator (whose name, btw, is not Isabel) from seedy drag bars to evangelical mega-churches to super-straight chi-chi restaurants. Not surprisingly, they also put her in the hospital twice. The narrator seems to be a fan of Dick Francis's racetrack-mysteries, so be warned: author Dorsey can be as nasty to her protagonist as Francis was to his.
The novel is written in mostly short, often snappy chapters, organized in sections that brilliantly use Ogden Nash's poem of the same title as headings: "Isabel met an enormous bear, / Isabel, Isabel didn't care . . ." and so on. It even has a few footnotes. I rather admired the narrator, not least for the way she occasionally reminds the reader that "Internet search engines are your friend" when a reference might go over one's head. I was so intrigued by the narrator's devotion to a painting by Mendelson Joe, of whom I'd never heard, that I looked the artist up. (The effort was worth it.)
Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure that if narrator and I were stuck in close quarters for any length of time, say on a car trip, we'd drive each other nuts. I'm an editor by trade, and narrator is a grammar snob of the sort that believes ending a sentence with a preposition is bad grammar. If she corrected me whenever I do it (which is often), there might be war.
All's well that ends well in The Adventures of Isabel -- in fact, if the book were staged, it would end like A Midsummer Night's Dream, with all the previously at-loose-ends characters happily paired up. Since this is the first of a series, any of them are free to reappear in subsequent tales. Fine with me. I'll be on the lookout.
They become the kernel of a diverse, colorful team of amateur sleuths who set out to solve young Maddy's murder, sometimes helping and other times interrupting the cops who are trying to do likewise. They include Denis, an intimacy-averse drag queen and crisis-intervention specialist; the narrator's previously estranged cousin Thelma, a born-again Christian; Vikki, Maddy's lover, who wants to get out of the life; and Jian, a woman who became homeless after fleeing her abusive husband and who turns out to be a world-class acrobat once she gets back in shape. In between, Jian and the ambisexual narrator carry on a hot affair that is mostly left to the reader's imagination. Fine with me: step-by-step sex scenes tend to slow down the action.
Maddy's murder turns out to be collateral damage in a criminal enterprise that involves not only murder but high-stakes fraud and drug dealing. Her efforts to get to the bottom of it take our narrator (whose name, btw, is not Isabel) from seedy drag bars to evangelical mega-churches to super-straight chi-chi restaurants. Not surprisingly, they also put her in the hospital twice. The narrator seems to be a fan of Dick Francis's racetrack-mysteries, so be warned: author Dorsey can be as nasty to her protagonist as Francis was to his.
The novel is written in mostly short, often snappy chapters, organized in sections that brilliantly use Ogden Nash's poem of the same title as headings: "Isabel met an enormous bear, / Isabel, Isabel didn't care . . ." and so on. It even has a few footnotes. I rather admired the narrator, not least for the way she occasionally reminds the reader that "Internet search engines are your friend" when a reference might go over one's head. I was so intrigued by the narrator's devotion to a painting by Mendelson Joe, of whom I'd never heard, that I looked the artist up. (The effort was worth it.)
Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure that if narrator and I were stuck in close quarters for any length of time, say on a car trip, we'd drive each other nuts. I'm an editor by trade, and narrator is a grammar snob of the sort that believes ending a sentence with a preposition is bad grammar. If she corrected me whenever I do it (which is often), there might be war.
All's well that ends well in The Adventures of Isabel -- in fact, if the book were staged, it would end like A Midsummer Night's Dream, with all the previously at-loose-ends characters happily paired up. Since this is the first of a series, any of them are free to reappear in subsequent tales. Fine with me. I'll be on the lookout.
June 28, 2020
⭐⭐
The Adventures of Isabel follows an unnamed protagonist and her cat, Bunnywit, when she is suddenly brought onto a case as an amateur sleuth. Hep is a good friend of hers whose daughter, a sex worker, is murdered. Knowing that individuals with “high-risk” occupations don’t get the same treatment when it comes to investigations, Hep asks the narrator for her help. In that time, the narrator helps other friends, explores her identity as an ambisexual, and revisits her past.
What I liked the most about The Adventures of Isabel was its call for diversity and how it brought attention to issues that certain groups face. The most obvious based on the synopsis is the treatment of sex workers and other “high-risk” people, but we see other issues discussed as well. The narrator was let go from her job after her employer discovered her sexual orientation, which, while illegal, is also reality for many. Then there’s Jian, a woman who became homeless due to domestic issues. There’s a lot of different groups of people represented in this book, and throughout the book you can see how their identities impact them in different ways.
Despite the diversity in this book, I was surprised by some of the characters and the dialogues they took part in. Apparently this book was sensitivity-read, but there were some instances where I stopped and questioned whether I read what I just did. And the narrator in particular was just not always likeable to me. She had an interesting backstory, and her snark was there for comedic purposes, but there were so many times where she came off as too abrasive.
Additionally, the story was organized in such a way where the mystery wasn’t really at the forefront of the novel. I understand why this is, but I think that this story is just so dialogue-heavy and not reliant enough on descriptions that some elements of the story get lost in it. For example, there are many times where the narrator discusses her ambisexuality, but I think that these scenes could have been more powerful with more reliance on description and action rather than dialogue.
Overall, I liked the concept of The Adventures of Isabel and what it aimed to do in terms of not only a mystery novel, but also one that embraced diversity. But I do also think that this book could be improved with a more organized storyline and more consistency overall.
Find more of my reviews here: www.julieannasbooks.com 🖤
June 20, 2020
"The Adventures of Isabel" was an amusing book. The story deals with some heavy subjects -- murder, assault, drugs, fraud, harassment and physical attacks on LGBTQ individuals -- and the author treats these issues seriously. However, some of the characters, especially the main character, Isabel, are rather irreverent in how they talk about their experiences. This is in part a defense or coping mechanism, but Isabel is also just somewhat snarky. As a result, it makes for some rather amusing dialogue. The main character, Isabel, is an ambisexual former social worker who lives in an apartment with her cat, Bunnywit, and, unable to find another social work position, is considering making a business of the other thing she does well (if you catch her innuendo), when she receives a phone call from her very gay best friend Denis, who wants her to accompany his neighbor, Maddy Pritchard, otherwise known as Hep (due to her striking resemblance to Katherine Hepburn), to the morgue to check out a dead body that is likely her granddaughter, also named Maddy. Hep and Denis convince Isabel to try to solve Maddy's murder, knowing that a dead prostitute is not exactly going to be high priority for the police. The efforts to solve the murder result in Isabel making some new friends, making some dangerous enemies, becoming reacquainted with some former associates, and having some rather interesting (and at times very unpleasant) experiences.
I don't want to say anything more about the storyline because a lot of what makes the story so enjoyable is finding out what happens next and how the characters react to the new revelations or events. The characters are creative and well-developed and there is some rather good dialogue. There is also some significant personal growth/reevaluation of past beliefs with some of the characters, which proves critical in solving the murder and preventing additional crimes. The author includes some pretty good surprise twists in the story. I would certainly recommend this book.
I received a copy of the e-book via NetGalley in exchange for a review.
I don't want to say anything more about the storyline because a lot of what makes the story so enjoyable is finding out what happens next and how the characters react to the new revelations or events. The characters are creative and well-developed and there is some rather good dialogue. There is also some significant personal growth/reevaluation of past beliefs with some of the characters, which proves critical in solving the murder and preventing additional crimes. The author includes some pretty good surprise twists in the story. I would certainly recommend this book.
I received a copy of the e-book via NetGalley in exchange for a review.
August 11, 2021
I feel this is going to be a marmite kind of book. I had high hopes after reading the blurb, it sounded quirky, fun and the right side of bizarre.
The chapters are structured using a Ogden Nash poem (The Adventures of Isabel) which provided an unusual format I have not seen previously and admittedly enjoyed and it does attempt to include a diverse spectrum of sexualities across its characters... more about this later.
Alas I think for me personally it was too much and I struggled not only to connect with our protagonist but follow a lot of the narrative.
It was so fast paced it felt at times manic and disjointed. The first half of the book I was confused trying desperately to cling on via fingertips to the story with a vast number of complicated characters and side stories doing their best to make me lose my grip.
By the second half when I had grown accustomed to who everyone was and how they all linked my enjoyment increased and I was invested enough to want to see it through to the end, unfortunately at no point was I super excited to keep reading.
It was also disappointing for a book promising inclusiveness and diverse representation to see some potentially harmful language and descriptions included. Some of these are linked into the story and with context could be explained however there are other which seem to go completely unchecked and left me feeling uncomfortable.
It is rare for me to post such a negative review and I would love to hear what others thought as I can see many people loving this one, a quick scan of other reviews proves just this.
The chapters are structured using a Ogden Nash poem (The Adventures of Isabel) which provided an unusual format I have not seen previously and admittedly enjoyed and it does attempt to include a diverse spectrum of sexualities across its characters... more about this later.
Alas I think for me personally it was too much and I struggled not only to connect with our protagonist but follow a lot of the narrative.
It was so fast paced it felt at times manic and disjointed. The first half of the book I was confused trying desperately to cling on via fingertips to the story with a vast number of complicated characters and side stories doing their best to make me lose my grip.
By the second half when I had grown accustomed to who everyone was and how they all linked my enjoyment increased and I was invested enough to want to see it through to the end, unfortunately at no point was I super excited to keep reading.
It was also disappointing for a book promising inclusiveness and diverse representation to see some potentially harmful language and descriptions included. Some of these are linked into the story and with context could be explained however there are other which seem to go completely unchecked and left me feeling uncomfortable.
It is rare for me to post such a negative review and I would love to hear what others thought as I can see many people loving this one, a quick scan of other reviews proves just this.
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