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Dyke dud >> Robber's Wine turns out to be a groaner by JULIET WATERS
Ellen Hart is a past winner of the Lambda Literary Award for best Lesbian Mystery, and Robber's Wine is billed as "another exciting Jane Lawless mystery." On the cover is a fairly attractive woman who, according to the reflection in her sunglasses, is checking out some mysterious man. I don't know why I expected from these facts that the book was going to contain sex. You'd think if anyone would have learned by now that you can't judge a book by its cover, it would be me. And I guess there are a number of other reasons why someone would write lesbian pulp fiction. It beats having to come up with not-too-clever adjectives for single women (as in Nancy Drew's "athletic" friend George). It's a way of "normalizing" dykes by proving that a dyke can be just as dull as Angela Lansbury any Sunday of the week. And it's a way of appropriating pulp fiction and using it to provide positive gay role models. Except I, for one, don't read pulp fiction for positive role models. I read it for the little bit of violence, smut or voyeuristic plot line that makes up for the usually wooden writing. Unfortunately, Robber's Wine is just wooden writing, with the most minimal level of sleaze any writer could possibly get away with. Not only is there not a single hot lesbian sex scene, there isn't a hot anything scene in this book. And if there's a Lambda Literary Award for lamest Lesbian Mystery, I hope this wins, because I would hate to think that there might be even worse ones. The plot line revolves around the murder of lesbian matriarch Belle Dumont and the big family secret she was about to reveal to her three adult children just before her death. The secret has nothing to do with her sexuality. Her children and their father have all known and accepted her relationship with high school teacher Helvi Sitala for years. In fact, Belle's ex-husband Eddie taught at the same school as Helvi, and they're old friends. These are all liberal-minded, loving, sophisticated people, despite the probability that one of them is a murderer. But as the mystery progresses (at a physically challenged snail's pace), it would seem that this brood of breeders is just a little bit more messed up than they might seem on the surface. And unfortunately for them, restaurant owner and amateur sleuth, Jane Lawless, shows up to visit her old friend Belle, just before the murder is discovered. Jane picks up the scent of denial pretty soon, and 300 pages later the most obvious person is caught with "a trap" so painfully clichéd, I think the last time it was used was in an episode of Scooby Doo. Beyond how dull, witless and sexless Jane Lawless is, there's an irritating subtext throughout this book that makes it all somehow seem like lesbians have some kind of natural instinct for truth and ethical behaviour that heterosexuals lack. It's subtle but it's there, much to the detriment of the lesbian characters. There are five gay characters in this book who are all equally flawless and equally dull. In sum, this book is a groan-a-page dud that might have been somewhat salvaged by one or two imaginative sex scenes, or at least by giving the gay characters some interesting quirks or tragic flaws. Then again, if you're looking for a book to convince your parents, or even your grandparents, that lesbians are as conformist, conservative and downright boring as any one else they've ever met, Robber's Wine is the perfect solution to that problem. Robber's Wine by Ellen Hart, Ballantyne, pb, 308 pp. $6.99
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On normal weeks I don't have an urge to play the role of smut critic. But the temperature and humidity last week was such that my sluggish brain was dying for any excuse to read mindless pulp. In this frame of mind, I decided to give Ellen Hart's Robber's Wine a shot, since it looked like it might have a bit of smut potential.