Monday, June 16, 2014

Death Turns a Trick by Julie Smith

15Jun. Kindle.

In this series, Smith makes San Francisco her setting. San Francisco is a city of definite personality as is New Orleans, but it doesn't become a defining feature of the story as New Orleans is in the Skip Langdon stories. Here the heroine is Rebecca Schwartz, a feminist Jewish lawyer. I'm pretty sure that is the order in which the adjectives are repeatedly repeated. (A little redundancy never hurt anyone.)

Rebecca even refers to herself as a "JAP" (Jewish American Princess) at one point. However, none of those adjectives seem particularly critical to either Rebecca as a character or the story. The fact that she is a feminist lawyer puts her in a position to be the attorney of record for a coop of prostitutes, but I suspect that other devices could have accomplished the placement as easily.

Oh well, we have political and police corruption and a successful bordello in SF; all kinds of fun.

One little thing has been surprising me. Everybody in Smith's books that I have just read (or reread) goes around high most of the time. Is pot smoking by professionals really so commonplace? Rebecca doesn't smoke much or often although most of the other characters seem to be high most of the time, and in her series, Skip Langdon seems to live on the stuff. I never noticed that when I read these years ago.

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