Slay Me Tender (Aubrey Lyle Mystery) [Paperback]

Jenny Scholten (Author)

Book Description

Series: Aubrey Lyle Mystery | Publication Date: October 1, 2001

When Plushious Velvet, the featured stripper at the Naughtyland club, goes missing, fellow stripper Aubrey Lyle finds a bloody breast implant that points to foul play. With an insider's view of the sex industry, Aubrey is an unflappable heroine. Lively eccentric characters and spicy action fills out this colorful portrait of San Francisco's seamy underside, as Aubrey fights for the downtrodden.

Editorial Reviews

Review

.....definately a walk on the wild side. --R. Lynne Watson - MegaScene

Aubrey is an absolutely credible amateur detective. --Deborah Peifer, Bay Area Reporter

tightly woven prose, smooth characters with a penchant for down-and-dirty action, and a fearless heroine. --Library Journal

About the Author

Jenny Scholten grew up in midwestern college towns and in rural Virginia. After attending Antioch College and the University of Maryland she continued a series of working-class jobs, eventually finding happiness as an exotic dancer, a job she held for five years. She lives in Oakland, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: New Victoria Publishers (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892281155
• ISBN-13: 978-1892281159
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,865,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Watch out world, Aubrey Lyle is back!, April 11, 2002

By 

M. J. Lowe "www.mjlowe.info" (Denver, Colorado United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slay Me Tender (Aubrey Lyle Mystery) (Paperback)

Twenty five years old, Aubrey is worried about how much longer she can work as an exotic dancer. Her knees are aching and her breasts are sagging. Actually, Aubrey claims they've always sagged. Nevertheless, this awareness of the vulnerability of her livelihood to her physique and the extreme measures other dancers go to, particularly in regard to breast enhancements, are central themes to Slay Me Tender. The novel opens with Naughtyland's weekly feature dancer (usually porn stars from out of town), Plushious Velvett, complaining to Aubrey about the hardening of the star's very large breast implants. When Plushious disappears, leaving part of her wardrobe and fails to appear at her next scheduled club, Aubrey's natural curiosity gets peaked. Then she finds a gun, dark poems written by Plushious and what appears to be a bloody breast implant in the building where Plushious was staying, Aubrey can't help but start looking into the disappearance.

Scholten portrays the colorful and seamy aspects of the housing shortage in San Francisco and the gentrification of the infamous Tenderloin district with amusing detail. Her strengths are her characters and sense of humor, particularly irony. Aubrey shares a flat with four other people. It's a wonderful, motley group. There's Vivian who is working on her thesis and exploring non-monogamy much to the strain of her relationship with the quiet Zan. There's the beautiful and vibrant artist, Geoffrey who is "tri-sexual" (as in he'll try anything sexual) as well as his current, and frequently present, boyfriend, Gregor-with-the-red-Renault-convertible. And finally, there is shy, neurotic and modest Hugh. With his photographic memory Hugh provides most of the roommates fashion accessories from thrift store where he works and looks after everyone including Aubrey's cat, Hodge. Added to Aubrey's regular roommates are the feature dancers who are temporarily staying at Aubrey's place (along with their manager or body guard or girlfriend, etc.). These are just a few of the amusing, yet realistic and compassionately drawn characters in Slay Me Tender.

A fiercely independent young woman of Southern white trash ancestry, Aubrey continues to be ambivalent about her job. She defends the choice of employment. "With what other job could a history major without computer skills make three hundred dollars a day?" (page 26) When a roommate makes disparaging comments about "those women," she points out that she is a worker in the "sex industry." Yet Aubrey is realistic about the potential problems of the job. She worries about how long much longer her body will be "profitable" as a dancer, and the possible dangers of overly "friendly" customers. She carefully avoids being in debt to the older police officer who is a regular at Naughtyland. Yet she is a constant witness to the victims of the industry's "victimless crimes."

At one point, Aubrey is surprised at her own stereotyping of customers' wives. She realizes that her assumptions are a "buying into the system's" view of these women. Aubrey's willingness to self examine, makes her character more attractive. Scholten's sardonic humor takes the bitter edge off the futility of the situation for the residents and workers of the Tenderloin. Despite a range of offers, Aubrey, ironically continues her life of celibacy, futher disrupting those annoying stereotypes of exotic dancers.

Nothing is quite as it appears in Scholten's second -- and better -- Aubrey Lyle mystery. The plot flows more smoothly. Scholten creates an interesting hybrid mystery. Her characters and plots have a very traditional amateur sleuth mystery quality. However, her focus on the sex industry and related organized crime are subject matter that is far more typical of "hard boiled" noir detective mysteries. She even manages to incorportate an almost slapstick car chase scene. This combination works for Scholten and makes for often amusing and occasionally provocative reading. I will be looking forward to further developments in Aubrey's world.

4.0 out of 5 stars An original voice, March 6, 2002

By A Customer

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This review is from: Slay Me Tender (Aubrey Lyle Mystery) (Paperback)

This book, and her first, are well-written, informative, and entertaining. It's written from a point of view I hadn't heard before.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fasten your seatbelt ..., February 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Slay Me Tender (Aubrey Lyle Mystery) (Paperback)

If life were fair, this book would be on a best-seller list. Scholten is a remarkable writer -- bold, humorous, and radically original.

It's hard not to love her irrepressible heroine, Aubrey, and I hope she will be back with many more tales to tell.