VALEDICTORIAN

Another series installment that chronicles the adventures of a San Francisco Bay Area dominatrix detective.   

In this moody, curious, and intriguing noir mystery, Mason (Partitions of Unity, 2018, etc.) revisits her durable and multitalented protagonist Elizabeth Cromwell. In a bar one afternoon, the tall, blonde sex worker meets 60-ish Israel “Izzy” Zhulzhoff, an odd bird who tells her lengthy stories about his wife—and his pending divorce. He asks Cromwell to pose as his spouse at a high school reunion gala the same night. She agrees, but Zhulzhoff never shows up at the event. Instead, Cromwell meets and bonds with a woman named Sylvia Reynolds, another attendee whose husband is also curiously absent. Reynolds gives Cromwell the keys to her yellow Lamborghini, which Cromwell takes for a joyride across the Golden Gate Bridge; afterward, an unknown assailant attacks Cromwell, causing her to flee for her life. Deducing that she was set up by Reynolds, she trades notes with police, who provide her with an old file of unsolved murders of blonde women in the area. She also visits Mistress Annabel Flair, another local dominatrix, who’s happy to banter back and forth with her about sex dungeons and the business of “fantasy enactments,” although Annabel also reveals that she has plans to leave the Bay Area permanently. Cromwell develops a nagging suspicion that Reynolds may have been set up herself, and further snooping leads to an old but relevant case. Cromwell’s scrutiny of Zhulzhoff’s disappearance and likely death only leads her to more complicated connections. If the story seems rather convoluted rather than simply mysterious, that’s because it is. However, Mason’s prose still manages to provide it with a beating heart. Her style is artfully decorative for a detective novel, but it’s still resolutely functional, and it’s never in any way rushed or brisk. She makes use of cryptic dialogue and clever repartee to tell the story; many characters speak in near riddles with one another, and one can envision them volleying their one-of-a-kind bons mots back and forth with knowing grins. Readers of Mason’s other books will recognize her distinctive method of narration; indeed, some may well seek out this latest book because of it. It’s certainly a unique and quirky style, but it never diminishes the impact of the mystery plot or the overall characterization of Cromwell, who remains an intimidating figure to behold. She’s still clever, smart, seductive, edgy, beautiful, and every bit as tough as her “six feet two inches in pumps” stature suggests. From Cromwell’s first-person perspective, readers get to know intimately how she thinks, what she fears and desires, and, perhaps most importantly, how she investigates the crimes that always seems to land on her doorstep. Mason’s series of detective novels aren’t easy reads, to be sure, nor do they seem intended to be, as each carefully crafted line defies attempts at simplistic interpretation. Overall, readers will find that there’s much to savor in this moodily atmospheric whodunit.

An enjoyable, sometimes-challenging work for those who like contemplative, simmering mysteries.