REVIEW: Painted Ladies
This book is a good read and a convincing journey into identity and how unwanted attention can bring reflection and resilience to a character under threat.
Painted Ladies
A Jasmine Frame Story
P. R. Ellis
Jasmine Frame was scared of knives when she was a policeman. Now she finds herself on the trail of a knife killer. But it’s not just her skin that is in danger, her identity as a woman is under threat. ..
Short of work, Private Investigator Jasmine Frame eagerly responds to a request to help identify a transvestite murder victim. Having done so, Jasmine is desperate to remain involved in the case despite friction with her former boss DCI Sloane. She persuades her ex-colleague DS Tom Shepherd to accompany her to Butterflies, a transgender social group to help build a picture of the victim. Following the meeting another of the members is murdered.
This is a good book from P.R. Ellis and (I suppose) the first in a series of books about this engaging and believable character and I liked the warm and personal way that Ellis allows Jasmine’s internal dialogue to echo the movement of the plot, it’s difficult to go into details without giving away some of the delights of the mystery in this book. It was a convincing journey into identity and how unwanted attention can bring reflection and resilience to a character under threat. That this threat is a choice and one that moves the story on in such a shocking way is even more intriguing and marks Frame as a police/crime/thriller to watch.
This book also does a very subtle but effective education of the subtleties and differences of gender identities and the complexities of modern constructed gender identities and often how these same complexities are not apparent to the cis majority. It’s also a curious explanation of new fiction with intersectionality at the core of its narrative journey, although this may be by default rather than by design.
Overall it’s a good murder mystery, an enjoyable read and although not one of my favourite genres, it kept me interested enough to finish the book and to care about the protagonists journey.
Out now
paperback £8.99
For more into or to but the book or e-version see the publisher’s website here:
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