Romans Book

I made the mistake of reading this book first'it was the only one in the library. But in this, the fifth offering in the Helen Keremos mystery series, the author doesn't really have much left to pad the book with. In other words, we don't really find out much about Helen, other than she is a middle-aged lesbian P.I. with supreme confidence in her abilities and almost no fear. There's nothing wrong with this combination, but it's not much in itself. We rarely get a glimpse into Helen's psyche, her feelings, or her past.

In this one, Keremos is on her way to Hong Kong on business when she gets caught up in the murder of a Japanese Yakuza member who may have been involved in art forgeries so perfect that they are nearly impossible to detect. Pretty heady stuff for a start. But all the subsequent twists and turns are so difficult to follow that you might end up flipping to the end just to get it over with. I stayed with it, which may not have been a good idea.

The main premise'that someone has developed a method of making perfect forgeries of stolen paintings right down to the molecular level of the paint--is a new and unique concept to the genre, almost taking it into the realm of science fiction. Trouble is, we never learn who was doing these forgeries. In fact, from what we know about all the characters, none had the requisite knowledge to even attempt this, much less succeed at it. This is what I call a Fatal Flaw in a mystery'something that, no matter how good the rest of it is (and this one is none too good)'makes the novel as a whole a failure. Even the title is pretty off the mark.

I will probably go back and read some of the other books in this series, just because they are pioneering. This one I'll give a 2.4. Not really bad, but certainly not recommended.

Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 930 other lesbian mysteries by over 310 authors.