Has a better book ever been written? The answer is no. I loved this so much. It's both a fun time capsule and enduring in its themes. Ginny is a black lesbian amateur sleuth who has a world view shaped by her identity. Her best friend's girlfriend ends up dead and she decides to take on the case, all the while having these absurdly funny interactions with women she's trying to sleep with. I found this book hilarious and cinematic. I was put right into the late 80s / early 90s. And it had enough heart for it to be worth a reread at some point.

One of my critique partners helped me realize that the manuscript I've been revising is a hardboiled mystery. It was hard to recognize because my protag doesn't look like the typical hardboiled detective. So I immediately sought out all the hardboiled detective books I could find featuring black queer women. I found three, and this is the first I've read. It's honestly amazing how some things change, but so much stays the same. Ginny is still incredibly relatable, her observations on people and her place in society still tracks. The book is just a really good time. Very special. ( )

i really liked the tone of this throughout, and thought it started out really well. it kind of quickly dropped in quality, though as the mystery started to take shape. by which i mean, it was completely amorphous the entire time and never came together at all. i'm really not even sure why it was thrown in at all, because she didn't seem to be writing for the mystery, but for the telling of the way life was at the time the story took place. she was writing about race and class and sexual orientation far more than she was writing about who killed kelsey and why. the details about the murder that were uncovered were delivered to her by her friend naomi (who i guess worked in the da's office, and so was able to get inside information?) like she was reading from a report. there was no investigation, no detective work, no misdirection, no case at all, just random pieces of information and suspicions. but even those weren't the main thrust of the story. really this was just a character introduction and a city and time introduction, so we learn what it was like for a middle class black lesbian in chicago in the 1980's.

baker says as much in her author's note to this new edition. i actually really like what she says in the note, and how she too thinks the book is better read as social commentary than as a mystery. but aside from the lack of actual mystery, she doesn't give herself enough credit as a writer, because she's more than competent. her tone in the note is similar to the tone in the book, so i found i like her voice there as well. i don't particularly like the character of virginia kelly (i especially don't like her infidelity and actually i'm realizing that i didn't like any of the characters at all, and didn't find any of them well rounded or fully fleshed out) but i did enjoy her voice and i think i would have liked this more if it wasn't a mystery. ( )