Keith Hartman Monkey Stories

 

Publisher: CreateSpace (April 23, 2009)

I had the pleasure of stumbling upon Keith Hartman while hiding in the library stacks for some peace and quiet one day.  I found this little gem The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse. I read the original edition from 2001.  I loved it so much that I waited three weeks for the sequel to arrive into my library.   Both books were page turners. 

The original books had very strange technical programs.  I do not believe the publishers

Publisher: CreateSpace (December 8, 2009)

 hired a copy editor for the editions that I read. If you do not like reading errors like "cockpot" for "crockpit"  or "your" when "you're" is required, then I suggest that you read the 2009 editions of the books. At least, I hope those pesky errors were corrected.  If not, someone needs to hire a gay detective to find a copy editor. 


Oh, did I mention that this story has a gay detective?  
No. That would be the gumshoe mentioned in the titles.  The witch is his partner's friend and I never did understand who or what is a virtual corpse.
I loved the books.  I loved them so much that I want to the author to make more just for me.  Besides, he left a number of unfinished story lines in both books.  Shame on you Hartman for teasing me like that.
I like to tell you about his writing.  Freaking amazing.  Hartman has a gift. In this scene, the detective brings in the client's boyfriend to close the case.  You know what kind of case.

Skye was standing there, waiting.  I looked back at Charles. I have seen men who were being shot at who didn't look half as scared as he did. 

It is 2024, scientists have found the gene for homosexuality.  Charter schools have formed to perpetuate religious exclusivity or maybe the public school system finally just gave up.  The media creates a new boogeyman for every grassroots cause.  There is the Baptist News Network Religion which attacks everyone different.   The Cherokee nation is attempting to win back its rightful historical lands with help from China (who is tired of the US criticizing their stance on Tibet). Religious and sexual preferences have redistricted communities.  Advances in technology have virtually eliminated privacy.  And important people have a murderous need to protect themselves from the hint of a scandal. 

Hold on, isn't that happening now?  
 

• Facebook releases private information to third party applications, again.  
• A proposed Islamic community center has created huge opposition from some Christian organizations. 
• Don't Ask Don't Tell and Gay marriage are becoming constitutional issues.  
• A 2010 political candidate has been accused of witchcraft.  
• The Teaparty.  
• A well known minister has been accused of having homosexual relationships with minors.  
• Another candidate has been outed as a Nazi LARPer
• The MPAA just announced the difference between "male nudity" and plain ordinary "nudity."  (wtf?) 

All of it madness....  It is as if the psychic Hartman wrote his book in 2001 so that a reader can pick it up today and think, "This guy is like the Star Trek writers.  How did he know all this would become true? "

These books have all of it, nude pagans, gay hustlers, transvestite Shamans, mad artists, Baptist militia, a female pope, "devil-worshiping anti-Christian conspiracy" theory touting televangelists, artificial wombs, cloned actors, a cartoon animal totems and palmtops (forget the laptop). 

Oh. You want to know about the stories?

The Gumshoe and his psychic partner solve mysteries.  There you go. 
Seriously.  The stories are told from the viewpoints of various characters. This style takes some getting used to.  Despite this, the character's voices define this world full of its ironies and Hartman's social commentary. 

From the book jackets (I included the original artwork)

Meisha Merlin Pub., 1999

Welcome to 21st century Atlanta. During your stay, depending on your tastes, you can cruise gay midtown (I hear that the Inquisition Health Club has introduced manacles and chains to the aerobics class) or check out the Reverend-Senator Stonewall's headquarters at Freedom Plaza (watch out for the Christian Militia guarding it, though) or attend a sky-clad Wiccan sabbat (by invitation only). Avoid the courthouse, where the Cherokee have turned out in full war-paint to renegotiate a nineteenth century land deal. Also stay away from all cemeteries, at least until the police find out why someone is disinterring and crucifying corpses.

Meisha Merlin Pub,  2001

What had started as a simple case involving identical quintuplet actors cloned from the frozen corpse of a dead movie star was suddenly getting complicated. The pushy stage mom was to be expected, but the secret agents from the Cherokee nation came as a bit of a surprise, as did the lethal martial artist in the clown mask who had broken into his office. Nor had Drew planned on finding himself in the middle of a political death match between competing tele-ministeries. Besides, Drew had a personal score to settle, a little matter involving a privatized version of the KGB, a ring of male prostitutes, and a vampire sex cult.

I found it particularly humorous that the Baptists in his novels abort fetuses testing positive for the gay gene, assert that homosexuality is only found amongst those other evil religions (Catholic, Wiccan, Unitarian, etc.), and adopt non-gay embryos in order to provide them with a good home.   But that is just me.  
Love all the little children if they are straight and Baptist.  Come on, you know someone just like that.

I give this book an A.  I give the author a big fat D for not writing more stories about the Gumshoe and his psychic partner.  He has a great story and about 1/2 dozen open plots.  His version of Atlanta is unique, pretentious, fragmented and delightful.    I would want to visit it but I don't know where I would fit in.

Psy-chics in Love

Okra and Glue folks
I found it.  A series of books that focus on romances with psychics, mediums and clairvoyants. I can rid myself of the Blood trilogy.  

Heather Graham's Harrison Investigation series are ghost stories with emotion.
I have read the first two books of the series so far.
In these books there is attraction, flirting, and by god - kissing.
And sex.
Yup.
Sex.
Adam Harrison founded his investigation company when he learned that his own son had considerably abilities.
He and his employees track individuals with pyschic skills, investigate hauntings, and bed locals. 
In Haunted, Matt Stone the sheriff of a small Virginian town owns his Revolutionary War era family estate with its ghosts and staff.  He does not believe in ghosts.  Original, huh?  
After a honeymooning Bride streaks naked through the home after being accosted by a malicious presence he agrees to permit Harrison Investigators explore the house. The elegant Darcy Tremayne arrives and all hearts are a flutter. 

She dreams each night about a horrible crime that occurred in the estate. The story follows her investigation and his growing impatience with the ghostbuster.  


In The Presence, Toni MacNally and her five best friends rent a Scottish castle to organize dinner theater tours.  Suddenly, the real owner  Bruce MacNiall, appears and they learn that the little play she wrote for the performances are based on real people from MacNiall's family. 
The real Bruce MacNiall is investigating a serial killer that is using his ancestral home as a dumping ground while the Scooby friends continue their performances.  It gets really complicated fast.  I did learn that no one really eats haggis.
There are two mysteries here, the legend of the original Bruce MacNiall and the identity of the serial killer that is seeking the current Bruce MacNiall's attention.   


In both books, characters protest the apparent abilities of the investigators.  This got old fast for me.  The characters denied the haunting while everyone around them screams in terror.
Contrast that with the fact that the main characters fall into each others beds  pretty quickly. For both books, the average time was about 3 days from introduction to coitus.  

What I learned from the books:
True love is easier to believe than the dead communicating with the living.  

The books were quick reads.
Enjoy them for yourself. 

Dancing with Werewolves by Carole Nelson Douglas

"It was the revelation of the millennium: witches, werewolves, vampires, and other supernaturals are real. Fast-forward thirteen years: TV reporter Delilah Street used to cover the small-town bogeyman beat back in Kansas, but now, in high-octane Las Vegas--which is run by a werewolf mob--she finds herself holding back the very gates of Hell. At least she has a hot new guy and one big bad wolfhound to help her out..."


First things first I have to warn you, there is absolutely no dancing with werewolves in this book. There is a brief scene in which our heroine dances with a (maybe?) vampire but that's it. I guess you really shouldn't judge a book by its cover, er title...

In this book, we are introduced to Delilah Street, so named for the street she was supposedly found on. Yep, we got us an orphan heroine so we know already that the mystery of her origins is going to come into play at some point (yawn). We get periodic flashbacks that offer glimpses into her childhood, she was raised in group homes with mean vampire/would be rapist boys and strange dreamlike impressions of painful penetration by some kind of metallic thing. This gives some meat to her early description (by a would be suitor-vampire) as 'frigid'.
Normally the back story wouldn't be that important this early but as the cataclysmic event that drives Delilah from Kansas to Las Vegas happens early on, it's useful to know. So, let's move onto the story itself shall we?

After a hard day of reporting on bloated, internally dissolved cows, Delilah heads home to watch a CSI-like program based out of Las Vegas. At the end of the show there is a cameo of a corpse who is a dead-ringer (pun intended) for Delilah. Worrisome isn't it? Could this be a long lost twin? Who is that woman with the maggot in her nose? Unfortunately Delilah has a date coming over so she can't investigate...yet.
Delilah's date is with a vampire coworker, he's the news anchor, and it doesn't go well. It goes so horribly wrong that he manages to steal her spot at the station and turn the weather girl (weather witch) against her. Delilah finds herself demoted at work and goes home to find her cabin/cottage reduced to splinters from a freak tornado that only touched down at that particular spot. What can she do but pack up to go to Las Vegas to track down the corpse extra from the television program? (As opposed to, I don't know, fighting for her job and maybe finding a new place to live in town??)

So Delilah heads off to Vegas where she promptly meets Ric, a dowser for the dead, who promptly gets his arms around her to show her how to dowse for water, which promptly leads to a psychic awakening in Delilah as they discover a murdered couple, dating back 40 years or so. Oh yea, it's all erotically charged and they sort of dry hump right then and there. 'Cause nothing is hotter than bludgeoned corpse visions right?
Ric also has a tip for her to get in to Hector's (producer of that CSI show with the dopplganger corpse) fortress-like home. She gets in, he thinks she's the corpse, who actually was a corpse and he then offers her a place to live on the grounds. Huh?
After a whirlwind exploration of Vegas and acquiring a giant wolfhound, Delilah is set upon by not one, but two gangs of would-be collectors. Apparently her resemblance to the corpse is enough to make people want to kidnap her to rent her out and/or kill her again on film. M'Kay...
So naturally Delilah moves in with Hector. Meanwhile she is starting her own PI business, gotta figure out who those corpses were right?

Quick sum up: we have a woman who has her latent psychic powers awakened by a man. She requires the protection of a man, to save her from other men who want to collect her. Oh, and she has a huge dog.

So Delilah heads off to track down the origins of these corpses, mixing in with all sorts of supernaturals in the process. We have the albino vampire (maybe?) who seems to be helpful. At any rate he tricked her into accepting a talisman that seems to track and protect her. We have the werewolf casino owner/mafia boss who kidnaps her to force her into a magic show. We have the magician and his creepy fae assistants. The magician helps her develop her special mirror walking ability while the fae assistants try to kill her, then help her escape instead. Meanwhile, she discovers that the female half of the corpse couple that she found with Ric was the daughter of the man who kidnapped her. Whew!

Sum up squared: Gets kidnapped. Discovers another latent ability with the help of yet another man. Runs back to Hector's safe house.

The bulk of the book focuses on the developing relationship she has with Ric. They even get to the point of sex. She can't lay back because of the trauma of her nightmares so to make it easier on her, she loses her virginity doggie-style. WTF?? Ouch! Good thing they are in love...already...

Towards the end Delilah goes back to the casino to get proof (via a photo) that the female corpse really is dudes daughter. By then she is speculating that the man was a vampire since in those days the vampire/werewolf war was in full swing (If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned that before it's because is so shrouded in mystery that there isn't anything to say about it). Guess what happens next! Go on, I'll wait...that's right, she gets captured again. This time it isn't going to be all fun and games like being forced into a stage magician show though, nope, this time they are going to take her out into the hills for hunting.
So she's out in the boonies in a houseful of werewolves and after some debate as to whether or not they ought to sell her or pimp her, she is set 'free' to run so they can hunt her down and kill her. Finally we get to see Delilah taking action! Oh wait, it's our albino vampires' (maybe?) talisman that gets her off the porch and a bit of a head start. So she's running, and running, and running (seriously, head start or no, who stays ahead of a wolf??) when, miraculously, she runs into Ric! Ric whips out his gun and starts shooting her pursuers, telling her to keep going...such a hero and all right? (gag) Finally she is cornered and (gasp!) she discovers another latent talent, all by herself even! She surrounds herself with ghost wolves which keeps her attackers at bay (heh, get it?) until the zombies show up to tear the werewolves limb from limb.
Wait a second here, where the 'eff did the zombies come from? Oh, look, there's Ric...not only can he find the dead apparently he can raise them as well! Yea for super powers!

Sum up cubed: Gets caught again, by the same bad guys as before. Discovers yet another hidden talent (all by herself even!). Gets rescued by a man.

After all that Delilah heads back to Hector's. And then...the story just ends!



So ultimately we have a heroine who is a weak, sexually repressed, co-dependent mess. She managed to alienate her audience (me) with all of her internal whining and the obliviousness of her actions. Toward the end of the book I was starting to hope that she would just die and get it over with...after all, how many times can one woman really expect to be rescued?? The only reason I finished it was because I wanted to find out what the deal was with the dead couple. Imagine my irritation when the story ends with nothing more than the identity of the woman. Seriously?? All that build up and it's just left as a cliffhanger?

I could deal with the identity of the CSI corpse left undiscovered, I didn't need to have the origins of Delilah's super-duper powers spelled out but I think I deserved a bit of closure in the 'mystery' that drove the storyline! Suffice to say, I will not be reading the next installment.

Verdict: Story FAIL.

Not Today or Even on Doomsday

Okra and Glue
Lori Handeland's Any Given Doomsday
I found wrote this review for a knitting forum back in January.
Not sure where to start.......
We meet a Elizabeth Phoenix, a psychic ex-cop who was raised in a foster home and has a huge chip on her shoulder.
Original… You were thinking that, right?
Now, I like urban fantasy and this was a great read. But the woman in me was left feeling abused by this story.  The not-quite feminist, quasi-liberal, closet conservative woman in me.

First, Phoenix’s foster mother is murdered and through her death she passes on these super special powers.
That was okay, I guess..
Dramatic event leads to serious life changes.  I watch Criminal Minds, I get it.

She cannot access this power and requires the aid of a MAN to help her become the ass kicking uberpsychic she was foretold to become. I don’t mean in some mystical Native American ritualistic manner. Because being left in the wilderness with just a knife is lame....

Oh wait, did I mention that she must seek out the incredibly handsome and underclothed Sawyer, a mysterious Native American skinwalker for psychic accession? Ever hear the story about the magical minority? Cliche’
So she leaves her job as a part-time waitress in a cop bar to go cross country.
If you are thinking sweat huts or smoking pipes, get your mind in teh gutter. That is right, he screws her so that she can become the One.

Besides, she really needed to get laid anyway and she mentions several times how long she has been without sex.
Guess what? As STD’s goes she has a problem. She is an empath and when she sexes up someone she gains their powers. See where this is going?

Every man in her life is an enigma. She can’t tell if they are good or bad so she screws them. Despite this clever tactic, somehow she manages to remain a sarcastic bitch to them even after she screws them.
Let’s talk about sex.
Sex kills. Sex enlightens. Sex enslaves. Sex empowers. Sex heals.
Seriously. She gets her sex on in this story and so do the male leads. Besides Sawyer there is Jimmy. A dampir, a human and vampire hybrid. Jimmy became her first love and her foster brother when they were kids. BTW, as it goes this dhampir has daddy issues.  Creepy…

When she encounters a Berserker, an angry bear-like warrior killer, in her bedroom….

…he rose. And rose. and rose. Yep, naked all the way down to his toes - a particularly long distance since I put him in the vicinity of six seven. And the adage of about big feet, big - well you know the one - this guy appeared to have invented it,

Overall the men help her, ignore her, use her and then disappear throughout the book.
After the big battle with the Jimmy’s blood-sucking relatives, does she regroup and meet with the other warriors for good? Hell no. She goes back to bartending. WTF!!!!

I really did not like Liz, sexually habits aside, she was a selfish, hard-headed bitch who walks into really obviously bad situations despite being a former cop and it worried me that she will whore herself to every supernatural creature in order to achieve the power needed to stop the apocalypse.

Did I forget to mention the fairy?