Laurie King's first Kate Martinelli mystery, A Grave Talent, won Best First Novel honors from both the Mystery Writers of America and the British Crime Writers' Association. In this fourth installment in the series, King once again displays her talent as both a prose stylist and a masterful plotter in a case that proves to be personally harrowing for her heroine.

While attending a school play one evening, Detective Martinelli gets what appears to be a routine page about a homicide. The murder victim is James Larsen, an airport baggage handler found in the Presidio, handcuffed, strangled, and with stun-gun burns on his chest. And apparently he had a sweet tooth, given the candies found in his pocket. When it comes out that Larsen was an abusive husband whose wife now lives in a shelter, Martinelli's list of suspects takes a distasteful turn. Could the perpetrator be connected with the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement, the group of secretive women (or men) who've lately been terrorizing abusers and rapists around the city with their humorous, updated version of the tar-and-feather treatment? Could it be Larsen's wife, a mousy woman who, nonetheless, is clearly harboring some secrets? Could it be Roz Hall, Martinelli's social crusading feminist minister friend? In each case, rage would be justified, but not murder.

When two additional murder victims with similar profiles--and pockets full of candy--surface, the San Francisco media takes an interest in this latest instance of vigilante justice. The investigation is further complicated by Roz's very public interest in the case of a young Indian bride who she believes was murdered. As Martinelli and her partner Al Hawkins try to sort through the mire of emotional entanglements, personal politics, and public scrutiny, King deftly maneuvers her tale through several carefully crafted turns. The novel is also threaded with Hindu spirituality and images of the dark goddess Kali, a vengeful figure perfectly appropriate in a novel about victimized women striking back. --Patrick O'Kelley


From Publishers Weekly
The multitalented King (O Jerusalem, etc.) has not published a Kate Martinelli novel since 1996's With Child, so fans aplenty have been waiting for the next installment in this acclaimed series. San Francisco police detective Kate and her partner, Al Hawken, first introduced in the Edgar-winning A Grave Talent, have been called in to investigate the murder of a man who turns out to have a long record of beating up his wife. The wife, who took refuge at a battered women's shelter, has a rock-solid alibi and there are no other obvious suspects. Meanwhile, a group of feminist vigilantes called the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement has been exacting wickedly funny acts of minor revenge against men who physically abuse women. Kate has a sneaking sympathy for the work of the Ladies, but when more bodies of abusive men start turning up, it looks as though someone--some woman--in San Francisco has taken the ultimate step in vengeance. King brings her theme of women's rage against abusive men together with a focus on goddess worship, especially in Indian religions. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction and creation, figures largely in this dense and suspenseful tale. As in her powerful thriller A Darker Place, King's ability to turn esoteric religious concepts into key narrative points makes this a highly unusual--and memorable--novel. It suffers a bit from talkiness, but even so, it's a compelling, effective piece of writing. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
King is a versatile writer: while her Mary Russell mysteries take place in the days of Sherlock Holmes, Night Work, the fourth in a series starring police detective Kate Martinelli, is a contemporary novel set in San Francisco. Known abusers of women are turning up dead with candy in their pockets. A group of vigilante women who call themselves Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement are suspects, as is Roz Hall, a feminist minister. Woven into the plot are discussions of women's rage and vengeful goddesses including the Hindu goddess Kali. The idea that some vindictive women are committing serial murders is chilling, but the surprise ending is somewhat disappointing and seems unlikely. Narrator Alyssa Bresnahan handles the characters well. Recommended for all public libraries. Patsy E. Gray, Huntsville P.L., AL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Reunited with both her work partner, Al Hawkin, and her domestic partner, Lee Cooper, detective Kate Martinelli seems ready to get back to solving cases for the San Francisco Police Departmentwork that, unfortunately, threatens once again to cross the boundary between workplace and home front. While chasing down the killer of James Larsen, wife beater, she finds his abused wife, Emily, at a shelter served by Roz Hall, feminist, minister, and partner to Maj Freiling, Lee's best friend. Roz, although in the middle of a doctoral dissertation on ``Manifestations of the Violent Warrior Goddess in the Hebrew Bible,'' has time not only to inveigle Kate into a second abused-woman casethat of Pramilla Mehta, a child bride who may have been burned to death by her in-lawsbut to bring down on the SFPD a hailstorm of criticism from the press for investigating the death of the abuser before that of the abused. Police procedure must cohabit with political action, as Kate comes home from interviewing witnesses to coffee and dessert with Roz and Maj. Where, wonders Kate, does political action end and vigilante justice begin? She finds a second corpsethat of Matthew Banderas, rapisthandcuffed and marked with the signature stun-gun burn found also on Larsen and on victims of the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement, feminist scourges who, until now, have subjected their misogynist victims to discomfort and ridicule but no injury. Kate's passion, and King's (With Child, 1996, etc.), brings new urgency to a familiar story about merging personal conviction with professional duty. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"King is a deft and literate writer whose work never fails to please....A superior novel."
-- The San Diego Union-Tribune

"A dense and suspenseful tale. Memorable."
-- Publishers Weekly

"A richly feminist book in which king demonstrates again her remarkable skills in sinking the reader into a special culture/community where her many-layered stories unfold."
-- Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

"King is very, very good at looking society in the face and reflecting on the way it is now."
-- The Boston Sunday Globe

"As with all laurie king's books, the facts tell only the smallest part of the truth....king exposes the issue with intensity and passion. It's hard to turn away even if you wanted to."
-- Mystery News

Read all the novels by Edgar and Creasey award winner Laurie R. King!

Kate Martinelli Mysteries

A Grave Talent
To Play The Fool
With Child

Mary Russell Mysteries

The Beekeeper's
Apprentice
A Monstrous
Regiment Of Women
A Letter Of Mary
The Moor
O Jerusalem

And her stand-alone novel

A Darker Place
Available from Bantam Books
And coming soon in hardcover
Folly



Review
"A dark and suspenseful tale."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Raves for Laurie R. King's A Darker Place:

"A nail-biter thriller."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Laurie R. King delivers a story that...casts a spell of psychological terror more visceral than any serial killer melodrama and that, for the thoughtful reader, offers intellectual rewards as well."
--The San Diego Union-Tribune

"A literary thriller to end all literary thrillers."
--Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

"King always writes well, and her stories sweep along with an inexorable force that comes from a power greater than mere skillful plotting....A Darker Place is a fine study of sympathy and how it clouds our judgment about integrity."
--The Boston Globe

And the Kate Martinelli novels:

A Grave Talent, winner of the Edgar and John Creasey Memorial Awards for Best First Crime Novel:

"If there is a new P. D. James...I would put my money on Laurie R. King, whose A Grave Talent kept me reading deep into the night."
--The Boston Globe

To Play The Fool:

"Confirms King's status as one of the most original talents to emerge in the '90s."
--Kirkus Reviews

With Child:

"Smart, thoughtful...Ms. King has a way with children....Warm characterizations...searching insights...this detective has a mind that is always on the move."
--The New York Times Book Review




"A vibrant, original writer." --Chicago Times on A Darker Place

"King never takes up a familiar form without making
it her own." --Kirkus Reviews

"An original and skilled writing talent." --The Cleveland Plain Dealer -->


Book Description
Night Work

Kate and her partner, Al Hawkin, are called to a scene of carefully executed murder: the victim is a muscular man, handcuffed and strangled, a stun gun's faint burn on his chest and candy in his pocket. The likeliest person to want him dead, his often-abused wife, is meek and frail--and has an airtight alibi. Kate and Al are stumped, until a second body turns up--also zapped, cuffed, and strangled...and carrying a candy bar. This victim: a convicted rapist. As newspaper headlines speculate about vendetta killings, a third death draws Kate and Al into a network of pitiless destruction that reaches far beyond San Francisco, a modern-style hit list with shudderingly primal roots.



From the Inside Flap
Night Work

Kate and her partner, Al Hawkin, are called to a scene of carefully executed murder: the victim is a muscular man, handcuffed and strangled, a stun gun's faint burn on his chest and candy in his pocket. The likeliest person to want him dead, his often-abused wife, is meek and frail--and has an airtight alibi. Kate and Al are stumped, until a second body turns up--also zapped, cuffed, and strangled...and carrying a candy bar. This victim: a convicted rapist. As newspaper headlines speculate about vendetta killings, a third death draws Kate and Al into a network of pitiless destruction that reaches far beyond San Francisco, a modern-style hit list with shudderingly primal roots.


About the Author
Laurie R. King is the bestselling author of four contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli and five acclaimed Mary Russell mysteries, including The Beekeeper's Apprentice and O Jerusalem. Her most recent novel is the highly praised A Darker Place. She lives in northern California, where she is at work on her next suspense novel.


From the Hardcover edition.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
It is a place of skulls, a deathly place
Where we confront our violence and feel,
Before that broken and self-ravaged face,
The murderers we are, brought here to kneel.


Kate Martinelli sat in her uncomfortable metal folding chair and watched the world come to an end.

It ended quite nicely, in fact, considering the resources at hand and the skill of the participants, with an eye-searing flash and a startling crack, a swirl of colors, then abrupt darkness.

And giggles.

The lights went up again, parents and friends rose to applaud wildly, and twenty-three brightly costumed and painted children gathered on the stage to receive their praise.

The reason for Kate's presence stood third from the end, a mop-headed child with skin the color of milky coffee, a smile that lacked a pair of front teeth, and black eyes that glittered with excitement and pride.

Kate leaned over to speak into the ear of the woman at her side. "Your goddaughter makes a fine monkey."

Lee Cooper laughed. "Mina's been driving Roz and Maj nuts practicing her part--she wore one tail out completely and broke a leg off the sofa jumping onto it. Last week she decided she wasn't going to eat anything but bananas, until Roz got a book that listed what monkeys actually eat."

"I hope she didn't then go around picking bugs out of tree trunks."

"I think Roz read selectively."

"Never trust a minister. Do you know--" Kate stopped, her face changing. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a vibrating pager, looked up at Lee, and shrugged in apology before digging the cell phone out of her pocket and beginning to push her way toward the exit and relative quiet. She was back in a couple of minutes, slipping the phone away as she walked up to the man who had been sitting on her other side during the performance and who was now standing at Lee's elbow, watchful and ready to offer a supporting hand in the crowd. Lee's caregiver spoke before Kate could open her mouth.

"What a pity, you're going to miss the fruit punch and cookies."

She rolled her eyes and said low into Jon's ear, "Why it couldn't have come an hour ago . . ."

"Poor dear," he said, sounding not in the least sympathetic. "'A policeman's lot is not a happy one.'"

"If I find you a ride, would you take her home?"

"Happy to. I'll be going out later, though."

"She'll be fine." Now for the difficult part. "Lee," Kate began. "Sweetheart?" but groveling did not prove necessary.

"You're off, then?"

"I'm sorry."

"Liar," said Lee cheerfully. "But you've been a very brave honorary godmother, so now you can go and play with your friends. That was Al, I assume?"

Kate and her partner, Al Hawkin, were on call tonight, and in a city the size of San Francisco, a homicide was no rare thing. She nodded, hesitated, and kissed Lee briefly on the cheek. Lee looked more pleased than surprised, which Kate took as a sign that she was doing something right, and Kate in turn felt gratified beyond the scope of her lover's reaction--their relationship had been more than a little touchy in recent months, and small signs loomed large. She stepped away carefully, looking down to be sure she didn't knock into Lee's cuffed crutches, and walked around the arranged folding chairs to congratulate Mina's adoptive parents. They were surrounded by others bent on the same purpose--or rather, Roz was surrounded by a circle of admirers, this tall, brown-haired, slightly freckled woman who was glowing and laughing and giving off warmth like (as one article in the Sunday Chronicle had put it) a fireplace of the soul.

When she had read that phrase, Kate had wondered to herself if the reporter really meant that Roz was hot. She was, in fact, one of the most unconsciously sexy women Kate knew.

Kate hadn't seen Roz in a couple of weeks, but she knew just looking at her, the way she gestured and leaned toward her audience, the way her laugh came and her eyes flashed, that Roz was involved in some passionate quest or other: She seemed to have grown a couple of inches and lost ten years, a look Kate had seen her wear often enough. Or it could have been from the fulsome praise being heaped on her by the other parents--all of whom, it seemed, had seen a television program Roz had been on the night before and were eager to tell her how great it had been, how great she had been. Roz threw one arm around the school principal and laughed with honest self-deprecation, and while Kate waited to get a word in, she studied the side of that animated face with the slightly uncomfortable affection a person invariably feels toward someone in whose debt she is and always will be, an ever-so-slightly servile discomfort that in Kate's case was magnified by the knowledge that her own lover had once slept with this woman. She liked Roz (how could she not?) and respected her enormously, but she could never be completely comfortable with her.

Roz's partner, Maj Freiling, stood slightly to one side, taking all this in while she spoke with a woman Kate vaguely remembered having met at one of their parties. Maj was short, black-haired, and--incongruously--Swedish; her name therefore was pronounced "my," forming the source of endless puns from Roz. Most people who knew Roz assumed that her quiet partner was a nonentity whose job was to keep house, to produce brilliant meals at the drop of Roz's hat, and to laugh politely at Roz's jokes. Most people were wrong. Just because Maj spoke little did not mean she had nothing to say. She was the holder of several degrees in an area of brain research so arcane only half a dozen people in San Francisco had ever heard of it, and they in turn were not of the sort to be found in Roz's company of politicians and reformers. It seemed to Kate a case of complete incompatibility leading to a rock-solid marriage, just one more thing she didn't understand about Roz Hall.

Kate looked from one woman to the other, and gave up on the attempt to reach Roz. Maj smiled at Kate in complicity as Kate approached. Kate found herself grinning in return as she reached out to squeeze Maj's arm.

"Thanks for inviting me," she said. "I was going to come to the party afterward, but I got a call, and I have to go. Sorry. Be sure to tell Mina she was the best monkey I've ever seen."

FROM OUR EDITORS

Laurie King took First Novel honors from both the Mystery Writers of America and the British Crime Writers' Association with her first Kate Martinelli mystery, A Grave Talent. Now, in her fourth book in the series, King brings the low-key, lesbian homicide detective from San Francisco to bear on a mysterious killer or killers in Night Work. This time out, Kate's job will be complicated by the fact that the victims are hard to mourn and the suspects include several close friends.

The first victim is found handcuffed and strangled, brought down by a Taser gun whose burn mark is evident on his chest. When Kate and her partner, Al, are called to the scene they quickly make several interesting discoveries. First, the victim has a record of spousal abuse, and his wife is currently holed up in a battered women's shelter. Might she be the killer? Second, his pockets are filled with an odd assortment of candy.

When the victim's wife proves to have a watertight alibi, attention is given to a local vigilante group known as the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement, or the LOPD, whose amusing tactics have branded several known rapists and abusers about town. Wearing a huge scarlet letter on your chest or being tarred and feathered is nothing compared to this group's idea of modern-day vengeance. But while humiliation of the victims has reigned supreme, prior to this all the victims have been left alive, even if a few might have wished otherwise.

When a second murder victim turns up with a virtually identical wound and violent past, not to mention pockets filled with candy, Kate becomes even more convinced that the LOPD or some offshoot of the mystery group is responsible for the murders. This victim is a known rapist who has escaped conviction several times on technicalities or a lack of evidence. Recently he attacked a neighbor woman, beating her severely because she had the audacity to take the parking place he thought of as his. And a mysterious, unsigned note is delivered to the beaten woman's apartment, implying that her tormentor, and others like him, will hurt no one again.

While investigating these killings, Kate is also pulled into a different murder case involving a young Indian woman whose arranged marriage brought her to America, where she acquired a slow-witted husband and the in-laws from hell. Her fiery death a short time later appears to have been an accident, but an autopsy soon shows otherwise. Kate's investigation quickly becomes embroiled in the cultural implications involved with the age-old Indian custom of wife-burning. And on the vigilante serial murder case, she is dragged into the radical feminist political nest engendered by a woman minister who is a close friend of both Kate and her lover. When the two seemingly disparate cases begin to cross paths, Kate is plunged headlong into a deadly plot with national repercussions and an interesting twist that could have been ripped from today's headlines.

King, whose other series mystery features Mary Russell, a young, exuberant protégé of Sherlock Holmes, has a knack for creating strong, intriguing heroines and entertaining plots. Her deft juxtaposition of humor and terror, along with several provocative moral dilemmas that paint the crimes in shades of gray, allows Night Work to satisfy on a number of levels at once.

--Beth Amos

FROM THE PUBLISHER

After her last harrowing case Kate is more than ready for routine police work and a newfound serenity with her longtime lover, Lee, and their circle of close friends. Until one night when her pager summons her to a scene of carefully executed murder. Half-hidden in a clump of bushes lies a well-muscled corpse, handcuffed and strangled, a stun gun's faint burn on his chest and candy in his pocket. The only person who might have wanted airport baggage handler James Larsen dead, it seems, is the wife he repeatedly abused - who recently left him for a women's shelter. But her alibi is airtight, her physique frail, and her attitude less than vengeful." "Kate and her partner, Al Hawkin, are stumped. Then a second body turns up - also zapped, cuffed, strangled ... and carrying a chocolate bar. It is that of Matthew Banderas, a software salesman convicted of one rape, suspected of many more." "Yet Kate and Al can establish no personal link between the victims and cannot rule out coincidence. But in the midst of an unpromising investigation, Kate has another cause thrust upon her by her friend, feminist minister Roz Hall. Investigators have already called it an accident, but Roz is convinced the young Indian bride was actually murdered - and when Roz takes up a crusade, no one can deny her. As Kate wrestles with the clash between her personal and professional lives, a third killing draws her and Al into a network of pitiless destruction that reaches far beyond San Francisco, a contemporary-style hit list with shudderingly primal roots.

FROM THE CRITICS

Washington Post Book World

Rich, multi-layered storytelling that informs while it entertains.

Library Journal