Customer Reviews

Day Stripper

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There's a stripper in high heels running down a dirty street in the crusty San Francisco Tenderloin. Wearing little more than a layer of pancake makeup, she is hell bent on catching the john that just snatched a hundred dollars out of her bra. Reader; meet Aubrey Lyle, the character who's about to change the face of women's detective fiction. Day Stripper, written by newcomer Jenny Scholten and released October, 2000, by New Victoria Press, introduces the pragmatic Lyle, a young woman just trying to make a living stripping in San Francisco. When Lyle discovers one of her coworkers strangled with her own pink leather bikini top, she decides she had better investigate before the police try to pin it on her. In a rich narrative voice that describes San Francisco and its strip joint neighborhoods with authority, Scholten lets us perch on Lyle's shoulder as she digs her way deeper and deeper into the complex tale of a corrupt union boss, a zealous union organizer and S&M queen, and a supporting cast of disinterested sex workers, not to mention a flat full of angst-ridden house-mates. Unlike other popular detectives, Aubrey Lyle lives far beyond the fringes of the mainstream. She is almost entirely unsentimental, makes no apologies for her lifestyle, and has no grand ambitions to become something `better' some day. Her life suits her well enough just as it is, assuming she can solve the murder before she becomes the next victim. Day Stripper, based very loosely in part on Scholten's experiences as a dancer in one of the first strip clubs ever to unionize in San Francisco, is above all believable. The language is lush,the denouement is plausible and the build-up is satisfyingly suspenseful. Aubrey Lyle, while not sympathetic exactly, is likeable and real.

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Day Stripper is a readable, entertaining first novel for Scholten. The mystery follows Aubrey Lyle, a San Francisco stripper who finds herself tracking down a murderer after another of Naughtyland's dancers is found strangled in a leather bra barrowed from Aubrey.

Aubrey is helped along by an assortment of strange yet endearing roommates and friends who add texture and redeeming humor to the story. Though at times defensive of her work Aubrey is painfully realistic and practical about it. In fact Aubrey's roommates have begun to worry that her job as a "testosterone mop" has robbed her of her sex drive.

Scholten (who worked her way through graduate school as a stripper) depicts the illusionary world of "Live Nude Girls" as often grim and sometimes bizarrely amusing but never erotic particularly for the women working in it. Although at times uneven Day Stripper is a promising first novel for Scholten. It will be interesting to see what future stories she pens.

I was really impressed with this book. It is a good mystery, the plot develops nicely with enough twists to keep you reading on and on. I couldn't put it down!

If you want to read a mystery that takes you through the in's and out's of San Francisco's seedy, sex-worker underworld take a look at this one. A great debut novel...

Although the cover of this novel might suggest a book full of lewd and graphic detail of the sex-workers' world, in reality this is a great first novel for Jenny Scholten.

Scholten does an amazing job of discussing the political, social, and economic ramifications of women working in the sex industry. Her points are not preachy or heavy handed, and what she straightforwardly presents as first-hand experience in the sex-industry is magnificently accompanied by a sophisticated mystery.

The only reason I have not give this novel 5 stars is that it really wasn't the best match for me as a reader. However, I would suggest this book to other people, if for nothing else, to experience the voice of an author who I hope continues to share her talents with others.