She Came in Drag [Paperback]

Mary Wings (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

Halloween is creeping up on San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, setting the perfect stage for mischief, mayhem -- and murder. Emma Victor is hired to protect a rock diva who's been outted...in a parade of drag queen lookalikes!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, we'll turn the patriarchy into rubble." So chants PI Emma Victor, caught in a militant Lesbian Revengers demonstration on Halloween night in San Francisco. Emma is flying high after unknowingly ingesting a hallucinogenic mushroomAnot the best state to be in while protecting research scientist Dr. Rita Huelga, whose life is in danger after outing her ex-girlfriend, the rock diva Audra L?on, on a TV talk show. The PI can't help wondering what would motivate the fiercely private mycologist to reveal her deepest secret, and her suspicions of Huelga are heightened when L?on's girlfriend dies after dining on pasta and poisonous mushrooms. Lambda Award-winning Wings is superb in conjuring up the atmosphere of the city's lesbian scene as well as the creepy goings-on of the holiday; there are skeletons both in and out of closets, plot twists galore and more than one corpse interfering with Emma's trick-or-treating. Mystery fans not put off by a PI who isn't above using a one-night stand to get information will be so engaged by Wings's evocative prose and vivid details that they will be forgiving if all the loose threads aren't tied up neatly in the end.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 337 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425169359
• ISBN-13: 978-0425169353
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,843,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Emma Victor novel is not a drag as Ms. Wings soars, April 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: She Came in Drag (Paperback)

A trash TV show offers medical researcher Dr. Rita Huelga several hundred thousand dollars donated to her favorite charity if she will appear and admit that rock superstar Audra Leon was once her lover. Though she would prefer to ignore the Johnny Lever show, a third high school classmate Bevin Crosswell pushes her into going on TV. While the country awaits Rita confession from Beverly Hills, all the mycologist wants to do is go to the Dominican Republic to study the recently discovered forty-million year old mushroom. However, she goes through with the show, which is done in poor taste with Rita going ballistic and beating up Johnny.

After her appearance, death threats begin to arrive. The Lever folks as a show of good will and not ignoring the Jones case hire private Investigator Emma Victor to protect the scientist. Rita objects, but finds herself attracted to her bodyguard and agrees to the plan. Death strikes, but victim turns out to be a romantic rival of Rita's. The woman violently dies from the poison given her. Emma begins to investigate the murder in order to prove her client's innocence and to insure her safety.

The latest Emma Victor mystery, SHE COMES IN DRAG, is a well-written tale that provides readers with a compelling look at the lesbian lifestyle. The who-done-it is entertaining and San Francisco is always fun, but the characters and their interrelationships make the novel. Rita is a very complex protagonist and Emma remains a mix of compassion and steel. Mary Wings talent soars high with this terrific tale.

Harriet Klausner

3.0 out of 5 stars Nothing drags about this story, June 28, 2008

By 

J.M. Snyder "J.M. Snyder" (Richmond, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: She Came in Drag (Paperback)

To be honest, this is my first lesbian story, more or less. I've never really read anything about contemporary lesbians, particularly in such an urban setting. What bothered me is that the characters are portrayed in an almost masculine light, and I don't mean their appearances. I mean their actions. The casual sex, the emotionlessness ~ the women in this book have fallen into the traditional stereotypes usually reserved for men, and as a feminist this upset me. I guess I just never thought that a liberated women (particularly a lesbian) would succumb to objectifying women in the same ways that men do.

Other than that issue, though, the book was ... intriguing, to say the least. It was very strangely written ~ the author has a definite style that you either love or hate. I liked her metaphors but found her personification confusing at times. The book, though a mystery, isn't written in the straight-forward manner that most modern mysteries (say, Mary Higgins Clark) are written. This is much more wordy, with more subplots, much like a literary or non-genre fiction novel. Sex doesn't play a large role in the book but there are two sex scenes as well as many little spots where a character remembers loving another. It's lesbian sex, another "first" for me as I tend to like to read gay male erotica, and it struck me as too cut and dry, too masculine, in a way that gay male sex in fiction tends not to be. It's hard to explain, but the reversal of traditional gender roles is a very large part of this story.

Maybe it's because I'm not one for mysteries, but I didn't reach the same conclusion as Emma did at the end of the book. She managed to tie up all the loose ends and I was left wondering how she jumped to those conclusions. One reason for this is that whenever she finds a "clue," she doesn't go into what it means for her investigation or what she thinks about it at the time. In that respect, I guess Mary Wings writes for a smarter reader than me! Or at least a more deductive one. I'm still amazed by the way Sherlock Holmes solves his cases, so there you go.

But overall, a good read. Near the end I couldn't put it down. If you haven't read lesbian fiction before and want something to start with, I recommend this. There were enough references to previous cases that made me want to read Wings' other books, and I closed the book with satisfaction at the finish because everything was tied up neatly.