Leigh Redhead: Peepshow

When her best friend is accused of murdering an underworld figure and kidnapped pending execution, a stripper turned private detective goes undercover in the seedier side of the sex industry to find the real killer and save her friend. Along the way she is set up by the city’s most corrupt police officer, gets mixed up with a team of bizarre strippers and finds herself falling in lust with inappropriate men.
This book is set in Melbourne, Australia and we are choked with the fact. While a few local references are great to give a feeling for the city where the story takes place this one gives so many that at times it felt almost like a geography lesson. Sometimes less is more, this should have been one of those times. On the plus side the details given were correct as far as I know.
There was also just a touch too much of the strippers are just like all other women. They have boyfriends, children, advanced education etc. The shocking flop that was the movie Striptease comes to mind. I know that there are stereotypes out there that paint sex workers as uneducated, drug addicted, immoral and so on but I don’t think people who hold those kind of ideas of the sex industry would be attracted to this book. So all the passages that are there to show those assumptions aren’t true come across as preaching to the choir. We know.
Having said that I did find Peepshow to be a light, breezy and entertaining read with a twist I didn’t see coming until it was upon me. As a debut novel it was a good effort and I smell a series coming on.
Redhead is not at the level of ‘I’ll be watching out for her new releases’ just yet but I would expect her to improve with further experience, so who knows maybe one day.-Lynn
To read Alex's review of this book, click here

Charlaine Harris: Dead as a Doornail

Dead as a Doornail is the fifth book in the series centring around Sookie Stackhouse, cocktail waitress and telepath.
A serial killer is out stalking the two natured and the werepanther community has Sookie’s brother pegged as the prime suspect. At the next full moon they’ll tear him apart unless she can prove his innocence before then.
A task that would be easier if she wasn’t also on the killer’s hit list, trying to extricate her best friend from an abusive relationship and being dragged into the local werewolf pack’s leadership challenge.
There’s a lot to work with here but sadly I don’t think Dead as a Doornail lives up to its promise. To me the plot seemed to be secondary, with most of the book being taken up by Sookie trying to sort out her romantic priorities.
And what a tangle her love life is. It would seem that every supernatural being within a hundred-mile radius is madly in love with her including two vampires, a werewolf, a werepanther and two shape shifters. It’s even hinted that her fairy godmother might be interested. This would be all well and good if we were given some reason to believe that there was something about her that the supernatural find irresistible but as it is, we are not. By the time the shape shifting tiger started making a play for her I was having trouble suspending my disbelief and found the whole situation tiresome. What’s more we listen to all this angst and don’t even get the payoff of a single sex scene. Maybe the point of this story was to develop character rather than focus on action, if so I think it’s failed and it’s a shame to see a plot with such great potential take a back seat.
I’ve enjoyed the earlier instalments in this series and I hope it’s not losing its way. I’d probably take a look at the next book before I crossed the series off my reading list but Dead as a Doornail is one for the die-hard series fans. - Lynn

The Man in the Moss: Phil Rickman

The discovery of a two thousand-year-old body perfectly preserved in peat has excited the academic world. But to many he is more than the simple historic relic scholars see. He is central to the ancient spiritual traditions of the locals and his removal from the Moss precipitates a series of tragedies for the isolated community where he was found. They want him put back. While fundamentalist Christians and satanic cultists have both put their own interpretation on the discovery and seek to use it for their own ends eventually bringing disaster down on the town.
I am a fan of Phil Rickman, having discovered him through his Merrily Watkins series, and am slowly working my way through his back catalogue. The Man in the Moss is one of his earlier works and while I enjoyed the story I really don’t think it was one of his best.
I found the dialogue had an extensive use of dialect, which is one of my pet hates. I find it breaks up the flow and can become difficult to read.
He also felt the need to introduce a huge cast of characters, many of which were not central to the story. As a result every so often a name would pop up and I would be pulled out of the story trying to remember who that person was. When he had already drawn good strong primary and secondary characters I thought the additional details of insignificant characters, or indeed the inclusion of these characters at all, unnecessary.
I can certainly see the beginnings of what has since become Phil Rickman’s literary voice. Complexity of plot, good strong characterisation, great sense of atmosphere and supernatural elements grounded in reality enough to make them believable and hence scary are all here. But this early work does lack that certain something and I found it a mediocre read. If you are already a fan of Phil Rickman’s work I would recommend it for the sake of completeness. If you are interested in trying Rickman, start with one of his later works. - Lynn