Wavewalker

Saz Martin #2

by Stella Duffy

There is more than meets the eye to the activities of Dr Maxwell North, the internationally acclaimed therapist, healer and guru. A mysterious employee, the Wavewalker, hires Saz Martin to find out just exactly what. In an investigation which starts in seventies San Francisco, Saz Martin's attempt to expose North ends in personal disaster. Stella Duffy was brought up in New Zealand. An actor, improviser and stand-up comedian, she now lives in London. The other Saz Martin titles are Fresh Flesh, Calendar Girl and Beneath the Blonde .

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Queer, Lesbian, LGBT

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

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

Reviews

[Alena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyed the writing, but was bored a lot.

I'm quite disappointed that I didn't like it more. Can't quite put a finger on the why of the boredom. The mystery wasn't really one, the Process didn't interest me, the climax to me just meant good riddance, this is over.

Picked this up by chance a while ago, haven't given up on this author yet.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stella Duffy’s excellent London based private detective series starring Saz Martin returns in this superb sequel that takes in love and sex, San Francisco cults, a decades old cold case, a charming serial killer and lots of interesting characters making alternative lifestyle choices.

It reads easy and Duffy weaves an intriguing web in similar style to the first entry, tipping her hand to the reader with back story of the crimes which serves to heighten the tension as we ride along with Saz in to dangerous territory armed with the knowledge that Saz is possibly out of her depth. And to be fair, she might permanently be out of her depth as on the face of it she isn’t much of a detective - she knows who to ask for research help but often the pieces of the puzzle fall in to place simply by asking questions of strangers - and i’m not entirely sure she could solve a locked room mystery for example.

After two books featuring Saz however I am really quite enamoured of the series, no matter how little I would trust her to discover my own murderer, and I anticipate with the pleasure of what might come in book 3.

[Pam Coll · Rating 2 out of 5]

This author was recommended to me. Very engaging style. The time scheme and plot move quickly and with increasing tension. Many excellent moments, confrontations, machinations. However, this was a heavy story of lost hopes and craziness and filled with horror after horror. A disappointing read, seemed to spin out of the writer's control, strangely boring. Fantastical. Gratuitous sex scenes, also boring...

[Dane Divine · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I re-read this many, many, many years after my first reading. It was so interesting reading a book that was written in the late 1990s. Things have definitely changed.
Back then Serpent's Tail was radical and published books with queer characters. That was not a mainstream things back then. My young dyke-self loved the booked. Saz was cool and she had a girlfriend who was cool and was investigating strange and twisted people, one of whom was also a lesbian. It was so amazing to have contemporary representation (although I didn't know those words back then!), even if the women in it were absolutely nothing like me- except they loved women. Awesome!
Now I when read it, I was thinking about the plot and characters. I'd say it was very of its time and situated well in the queer world back then. And so true, if you want to speak to someone you phoned, wrote a letter or asked a friend to pass on a message. The time travel element was fun. Some of the things in the book were cringey, but like I said, times have changed. Thank goodness.
Still, this is worth a read.

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bizarre and intriguing novel about a private detective who becomes a pawn in a woman's revenge fantasy. The main character makes the story compelling, but the story itself has an inevitable conclusion that sometimes made it hard for me to sustain my interest. Overall, though, I really enjoyed the novel and will seek out more books by Stella Duffy.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't as a practice read detective genre novels. This one got my attention by being published by Serpent's Tail, with an English lesbian private eye and being about a murderous self-help cult that started in San Francisco (all things that are separately relevant to my interests.) It was interesting but kind of predictable for my Criminal Minds-honed taste.

[Paul Grimsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first exposure to Saz Martin and it got me hooked -- on the strength of this book I went and hunted down the others in the series. This was what probably got me reading crime novels again.

[Pam]

12/04 purchased used at amazon

[Mirrordance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessante.... qualche sbavatura alla fine... ma devo essere io, non e' la prima volta....
Una cosa certa. E' un'autrice che mi piacerebbe leggere in versione originale!!!